


A Journey of Love and Growth

by mols



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: 60s Slangs, Alternate Universe - Police, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blow Jobs, Cops AU, Day At The Beach, Dick learns slangs w the children, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Lavender Scare, M/M, Miami AU, Mutual Pining, Partners to Lovers, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Divorce, Red Scare, References to Depression, Road Trips, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:18:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mols/pseuds/mols
Summary: Lew and Dick take the long away around as things just keep happening between them. Also, a Miami PD AU, in which Dick and Nix decide to go to Miami together and be cops. What they didn't expect, though, was to have to deal with the fact that as much as them, the city was also living its darkest and brightest moments surrounding its queer community.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> /The italic parts are flashbacks/
> 
> And I would like to thanks Sanwall <3333333 the best beta ever11!!!!!!!! ufoparty and majesticginger for supporting me, like some other guys from the bob fandom had been amazing to me <33
> 
> A thank you for the author of Soldiers' Things for the inspiration too!!
> 
> Btw this my first long work in English, I hope I didn't make too many mistakes. English is like my thid language. I hope you'll can enjoy it and it was really nice to work w u all in this bigbang.
> 
> AND THAAAAAAAAAAAANK U FOR MOORBEES FOR THE EXCELENT ART WORK OFMG, U WERE AMAZING TOO!!!!!!!!

 

It was about ten years since they got back from Europe.

Nix had indeed dragged Dick to Jersey like they planned by a picturesque lake in Austria. 

They had stayed at Nixon, New Jersey for a couple of years to work at Nix’s family company, the Nixon Nitration Works. 

For the first couple of years, they had shared a small flat not far from the company; only the two of them – just like they used to on the other side of the ocean, but while back then they had had no other choice, here this seemed just the most natural next move after their military experience. Returning to the - old - habits they had had learnt and gotten used to in the army was how security felt like, sharing responsibilities and support with each other, like a married couple would. All in all, living together in order to have the necessary support to pass through the transition between military life to the civil one. It just seemed - and it was - the most sensible and comfortable choice one could do.

Not long after, though, Nix got married to his second wife, Irene - the lady he used to meet in Aldbourne during his free passes – and because of that, Lew moved back to the Nixon mansion before the couple could settle down somewhere else, just themselves and their own supposedly upcoming family. But then, there, Lew started to go downhill all over again. It even happened in a worse and drastic way than it had happened during the discovery of the Nazi camps; back then when he had no way to find VAT69, which pushed Lewis to his limits and to the point of breaking into a liquor store in Germany as if rationality and consciousness had left him.

It would come to be… Complicated times. Their stay in Nixon.

Nix’s drinking problem was suddenly rising fast, while Dick’s presence in his life was in a low. His married life didn’t seem to improve his state (or diminish the need for his commum addictions, mainly the specific taste of Vat 69) or make of him a more stable, happier man. Nix didn’t seem to try to cut back on the drinking, or look for more genuine reasons to smile anymore. It wasn’t like when he was about to get divorced and then finding solace in the soothing arms of this other woman of his – his spouse now. It actually didn’t work anymore; those other arms - now official ones - didn’t seem to have the same charm or softness as before, when they were always open and she was probably more tolerant of his vices.

When Dick would pass by to talk to him – and it didn’t happen as much, because Dick also had his own life to manage, and work to do; his own savings from the military couldn’t provide him with the necessities, nor did he have a rich family to pay his bills (and even if he had, he would never have accepted such a lifestyle, of course) - Lewis always seemed to be out of tune at his house, that is, the Nixon’s family mansion. 

Because Nix was drinking all the time, every night (and maybe even during daylight, for all Dick knew), it was impossible for Dick to reach him, to get the man to talk about anything they deemed important, in a serious way. Nix didn’t mind. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t make a move in any direction, that is, a choice about any matter, and Dick was getting tired of it. He knew the Nix he had been living with, sleeping beside, in the war, was hidden somewhere there between layers and layers of sedative alcoholic clouds, but it didn’t help the fact that he was losing Nix to his demons and Nix was letting them take him down.

It had been exhausting for Dick. He was getting used to the thought that maybe he should leave. He had tried to help Nix, but he didn’t seem to mind any of the words that came out of Dick’s mouth. Dick was honestly not really good at being vocal about Lew’s flaws and the problems that arose from those but he had tried, countless times he had tried to hint at something so Nix could glimpse at himself through someone else’s eyes, at least through his best friends’.

Many other things had happened in between, but Lewis probably didn’t remember most of them, at least not  details or the reasons that led them to happen. 

For his sake, Dick would think, for his sake.

One day it had been enough. For everybody. 

Dick had been thinking about leaving for a while when Lew’s father died. It was a normal day, as any other day, when Stanhope had a stroke and died at the hospital in the following morning.

Irene was out, tired of Lew’s drunk messes. Nix hadn’t gone to the funeral. Dick had gone but purely out of respect to the rest of the Nixon family (and Stanhope’s poor mistresses) and its employees in the Nixon company.

There was no speech or eulogy for the man, besides a sermon from a priest. Not many people showed up and those who did didn’t seem to have come out of love for the Nixon senior. Dick stayed, quietly, as he thought about Blanche and their friendship, one of his work colleagues and the former mistress of the elder Nixon; the relation that had kept him standing strong while he struggled to help his best friend out of his stupor.

After the ceremony, Dick was going back home but thought better of it and then he went to the Nixon mansion, he knew he could find the younger Nixon there .

Not long after, they would move to Miami together.


	2. The beginning

 

Presently Dick was packing some things. Leaned against his desk stood Dick, studying late reports and sorting them into older beige folders as well as assigning new reports to be made and recalling the ones he had left unconcluded, sorting them aside so he could come back to them as he finished revising other subjects. He didn’t have to do these things; staying late, finishing everything he got his hands onto the same day as they were presented to him. But it was him after all; Dick was a detail-oriented person, his best had always been a must in everything he did. His best was the only option he accepted - even though, theoretically, he understood perfection was an illusion, an unreachable goal.

Overall It was a normal day, not much different from any other. The day was calm, as was usual in this neighborhood. There weren’t many incidents, just a couple of things here and there, a case of robbery, a report of physical assault between two men and paperwork, basically. Not many people had already moved out to their neighborhood, although the region was getting more and more populated after the happenings in Cuba and other ones in a couple of other countries down south in the American continent.

It was just about to change, though, when he was finishing his midday shift and Nix knocked on his door that an unsolved subject, like a massive and scarlet elephant, came into the room as well and thickened the air with an unbreathable hotness like the breath of a lion, and the silence of a starving white bear. This something came between them as an threatening and impassable obstacle, something almost impossible to ignore; maybe not for war heroes, but then they were humans and both of them were extremely connected to each other, too intimately devoted to each other’s problems, secrets and mistakes to be indifferent and detached from the subject

They barely moved, even breathed as they eyed each other. That was the primal signal that something was really wrong and out of place, there.

What Dick usually did, as he had done several times during the European campaign, was to keep doing his job, even when noticing his snarky best friend out of the corner of his eye, sneaking into his office with no knocking or introduction, or listening to the opening of his footlocker after heard the unmistakable sound of the rubber sole of his jump boots stretching and pressing against the wooden floor. He would not draw his eyes up to the other man, nor would he smile at him; he knew if he did that it would compromise his attention and would also be taken as an invitation for teasing - and he didn’t need Nix to tease him more than normally - but his chest would still be overcome by a great heat and he wouldn’t be capable of stopping it, but he never cared much about it. Until now. 

These days had been tough for them; had been different, awkward days.

So like breaking a pattern, as soon as the other man stepped into the room, Dick’s eyes snapped up to Nix, waiting. He didn’t know for what, but he was. He couldn’t know if there was a hope, a will to fight back his own fears or Nix’s boldness using his pride or even the exposition of his feelings as a weapon out of an endless frustration that kept lasting. Either way, he wasn’t able to smile or pretend everything was alright right now, or those days, at least. Being away, avoiding his best friend made him unable to hold all of his emotions – like his awkwardness and anger – and to understand how to act out on a problem like this, when he felt like put on the other side of the room as if it were a ring and he needed to defend himself – and attack – to win or to establish dominance or respect, while the other person was a strange and he couldn’t predict their moves. 

When they decided to go to Miami and there, accepted an offer to enter to the Miami Beach police force, fitting in wasn’t so much of a problem since they had a lot of experience with tense and difficult situations while in precarious positions, under attack from an enemy who wouldn’t give up easily, but they had never really been prepared to deal with the complex and sometimes contradictory feelings you could have for an ally. As the army and the police were different kinds of institutions that worked with weapons and confronts, and required slightly different ways of dealing with people – most people should be seeing as citizens and targets of protection, not the other way around - it could be harder to deal with your own emotions and the resources around, although in the end they understood perfectly the basics of combat and were perfect to replace old police officers since they had their own -unique- experiences.

Still, a recurrent old and unconcluded subject would pop up at times, as if it kept hibernating during long winters, but as soon as it woke up it would be starving and ready to hunt their first meal after months of no feeding. The nature of Dick and Lewis’ relationship, and the consequences of it, was one of those complicated subjects that didn’t solve by themselves. They were supposed to be married with kids by now. They were supposed to have already settled down and have a good, stable life. They had a good and stable life, but not in a conservative – normal or socially acceptable – way of the word. They were happy and pleased, but it could be easily deemed selfish as there still were just the two of them. Two war buddies living together 10 years after the war. It was irresponsible.

 

_ “What was that, Lew?” Dick pulled away, pushing Nix away from him. _

_ Nix smiled awkwardly, as if he were trying to laugh it off. _

 

Nix had his eyes locked with Dick’s, whose owner had his files still in hands. He looked as stoic as usual, but he was as tense as a veteran soldier under attack to a good eye – and of course, Nix had this eye. His features were so smooth and inexpressive, so uncommon and Nix could notice it from miles away: he wasn’t comfortable, and neither was Nix, since he took off his eyes from the redhead, as the other looked up, and just dropped them to the first furniture he could find, his right hand following the motion for instinct, caressing the wooden surface of the object he had found by luck. The truth was that he was also feeling awkward for what had happened, for what they both did together, since Dick kissed him back.

From his side, Nix didn’t really regret to have kissed his best friend that day. He would rather do it again or take it at any given opportunity if he was prompted to, taking and caressing his best friend’s face with his bare hands as long as he could. Feeling the, now a little harsh, skin under his now callused hands to not forget the shape of Dick’s features, the so real texture of the skin against the sharp bones of Dick’s skinny face; or just give in return to the redhead what good Dick helped him to keep in himself, to show how grateful he was and how much he loved his best friend in such deep ways he could barely explain. But Dick didn’t answer well to Nix’s former action.

He had pulled and walked away as soon as Nixon remembered, and following this, in the next few days, the redhead started acting weirdly; looking for more work, more excuses to just stay away from him, to stay away from Nix and he knew whose it was fault and he knew how hard it’d be if it kept happening, it just hurt too much. Being away from Dick these days felt like a different routine, a different life, an existence that looked empty and strange to Nix.

Summoning up, they could not be like this forever; they should look for, find a way to live with each other and what had happened between them. They were friends, first and after all, and it couldn’t change now; that wasn’t something Nix would deem bearable to live with right now. He was still recovering, with Dick’s help; the war, the drinking, the divorce, the death of his father. And even if he were alright, it wasn’t what he wanted of life, he didn’t want Dick to step away from his life again.

"Dick." Nix called, voice drawn, still avoiding any eye contact. "I know that you aren’t the biggest fan of happy hours, but…" 

Nix gave a short chuckle, with no energy, nor anything that resembled cheerfulness; Nix was trying his best to look somehow at ease. 

He spoke quickly, anxiously anticipating that Dick’d stop him because Nix knew he  was probably going to do that.

"So...I looked for a thing we could do together and since you use  the station pool a bit -  a lot - I thought we could..."

"Look, Lew, I appreciate it but I don’t think..." Dick interrupted harshly, before Nix could finish what he meant to suggest.

"Come on, Dick" It was Nix's time to interrupt, almost harsh and a little too loud. He continued in a quieter tone, after a deep breath, "I just want to hang out with my best - best friend, you know?" He tensed up his shoulders. "And even if you maybe don’t see me as I see you...”

"Of course I do, Lew!" Dick rushed to state.

"…We are still partners and we have to deal with this,” he gestured, swinging his hand between them, “and each other."

So as he finished, he tried to maintain his eyes on Dick. 

Then Dick himself started feeling a little sick of his own behavior towards his best friend. It would be easy if it wasn’t Lew, he thought, it would have finished before it started and it would be just fine by then.  But it was Nix.

For Lipton or Harry it could come as a surprise, but Nix knew that Dick had had some relationships; some good, some not so good, with girls (and a boy) and that he knew how to deal with endings. Dick didn’t like them so much, but he dealt with these things as he always dealt with any other matter, with anything at all in his life – with certainty and courage; he knew that if he didn’t do anything, things would probably do it by themselves for him and usually in the most unpleased ways. But, Lew, Lew was special. 

Dick knew he would be, his smile, the way his eyes could sparkle with joy and amusement. The way he always handled Dick, made him smile, made him want to live for after, even with the worst (silent) breakdowns Dick’d had during the war – the ones Nix just knew and helped the Dick to work through because he knew Dick better than anybody. Every time he had caught himself desiring life, it was also for to be more with Lewis, to have a life with him, to see his smile in the next morning, to listen to his husky voice complaining that he wanted to sleep more before he could get up from bed.  Winters knew that Nix would be part of him in some – special - way.

So it wasn’t surprising to Dick that things could go this way. He’d known since the beginning of their relationship that he would catch himself, at any given minute, desiring, daydreaming, thinking of Nix in not friendship ways, not just friendship ways anyway. Even though he knew Nix wasn’t like him, didn’t deviate somehow from the norm - at least everything about him seemed to state it - that had never stopped him from feeling like almost giving it away, almost leaning forward to show something he was suffocated to maintain inside.

However he had learned to control his feelings, to appreciate just the fact they were together in a long and happy friendship, working together and having Nix not drinking, at least not as much as before, was a gift too – although he had gotten terribly drunk on his father’s funeral and in the following days.  In Miami they were finally happy and at ease, they were in peace away from Jersey; these things should be enough. He had too many good things to complain, too many good people around them, around him.

But the feeling was still there, throbbing in silence like his own heart – which wasn’t always acknowledged by its owner but it didn’t keep the organ from existing and pumping the blood around, giving life to the system that it belonged to. Nixon was the kind of man that one couldn’t stop thinking about. While his heart raced and melted at imagining his smile, his approval, the sign of his good mood and his precious opinion; the way his eyebrows wiggled when amused, his tiny smile of childish amusement. He could not keep thinking about Lewis in the ways he could not have him, it was not healthy for him or their relationship and  it wouldn’t do them any good, either.

"I...” Dick sighed, defeated. It wasn’t a war he was willing to fight; yes, he indeed hated retreats but was it worth to keep avoiding Nix when all he wanted was to see him and listen to his voice, to share with him his day and his life? When they had always been the best of friends and one of the main reasons that kept both of them stood on their feet, together and willing to fight back their daily lives in war and after that - even when life looked unbearable? Even when they thought they had done everything they could for each other?

“Ok, what did you arrange for us?" He smiled a little, that  tight and tidy smile of his which curved a bit a side of his lips, despite any sad expectation. 

Nix noticed that, his throat did as well, as it loosened its grip around itself.

“Well, little fish, I discovered a place that I think you might like.” Nix chuckled gingerly again, licking his lips as he made an attempt to get back his former courage to offer Dick a small day off out of the continent, a little trip, trying his best to bring a smile to his lips, making Dick’s smile wider with Nix’s words and braveness, besides of how much that sight brought Dick a kind of enchantment he never thought was real - which to his mind used just to belong to fairytales, a long time ago, though.

Seeing Dick smiling after so many days - too many days for Nix in any case - was so good to Nixon’s mood that he smiled back, a smile which reached his eyes. Sometimes he would even lose some words on his tongue, with those loose words meaning nothing at all. Dick did not seem to notice that, though, and so he kept smiling, nodding as much as Nixon dropped information like he was in the front again, talking about the beaches of Normandy to a group of soldiers he needed to teach.

“It’s a place not so far from here, but it’s a quiet and tranquil point.” He explained with a smirk, bending his head aside as he looked up. “I’m pretty sure you’d like it.”

Nix’s voice was much softer and melodic than before; his body was lax after feeling the tensed up muscles relax all at once – a lot less stressed out, tired of his former worries - than at the moment he got there. His shoulders loosened for the first time in days. Dick also liked his tone, light and jovial, Nix as himself again but a little bit softer than he used to be daily. Just flirtatious, even deliciously charming if he could tell, that was Dick’s expression for him, but he soon shook his head in disbelief for being such a cheesy fool.

“The place is as isolated as the lake in Austria, if you are wondering.” Nix pointed out at last, suddenly.

Dick arched his eyebrow with a tiny sly smirk trying to curver the corner of his lips. Wasn’t Nix the one who sent him to Paris to have a day in the city? Had he finally realized how much that lake felt much more like him, than that trip to Paris?

“So you know all these sweet secret places and never told me about them?” Dick smirked, amused at teasing Nix.

“I couldn’t reveal all my secrets, could I?” Nix shrugged gingerly. “Besides, I wanted to show you them myself.”

This confession made Dick’s heart swell and so he couldn’t help but blush slightly, diverting his eyes down a little. He hoped Nix wouldn’t realize his colored cheeks. Nix had this habit of always surprising him with these little things he would plan for them. If he wasn’t so hell-bent in believing Nix didn’t love him in that way, he could let the thought wander inside his head, that maybe Nix wanted them both to be as much as they had always been. Something nobody would believe in the first sight but quite understood at least in a instinctive way at the second or third glance.

“I’d be honored to be introduced to them, Nix.” Dick let out at last with a tiny smile of gratefulness.

Then Nix started describing the place, which was the Hobie Island Beach Park, specifically a small spot there. This small beach with calm waves and soft sand, or that was what Nix told Dick, was a good place to relax. The place was a bit difficult to access but Nix knew his way around these beaches, just as like he had always been good at locations and space in general. Besides he had known them since he was a teenager or even before, but then he couldn’t remember them as well as before to act out of instinct as much. He knew the secret paths and the way to get quicker into places that traffic was a must in between. It looked like a mix of his childhood memories and the experiences in the Army with maps and the search of German hideout spots. He barely could recall all the beaches or how they looked like, but some of them stayed in his memory for some reason, like water colored drawing besides some sensations like the scent of the sand, the noise of the slippers breaking old dry leaves and the excitement of starting figuring out in the horizon the sea line.

Surrounded by rocks, the beach was smaller than most of the other beaches. There were hidden holes around those rocks that one could drown in but Nix knew about that and Dick for sure supposed their existence; and was also reminded of them. Strangely the sand part of the beach seemed long, although the measure of the water seemed and was indeed slender. Tree roots made the way to the beach while their branches met each other as the trunks stood one beside the other. Another bank stood far away on the horizon, beyond the clear blue sea. While the city barely showed from the shore, a grass path leading to an earth path.

After some more lecturing about the Miami beach, Dick accepted Nix’s offer, as he did a lot of other times, as when they both decided to fight again, in a bit different way though. It seemed awesome, the possibility to have an activity they could do together, forgetting their duties – for once, in Dick’s case -, their responsibilities, and just letting go to enjoy themselves and their friendship which was dearer for both of them.

At last they decided their last details and soon they departed. They arranged to get together again two hours later from then. Like that, they would have the time to pack some stuff, put their trunks on under the clothes and wear soft and light outfits to strip them easily when they got to the sand. And in middle, as their relationship was demanding, they would prepare themselves mentally and emotionally for each other. 

They thought about avoiding serious subjects, like discussing their actual relationship and their feelings - what they thought were opposite. Nix was probably looking for relief and rest, Dick thought, he would not try to deceive his best friend of course, but he, Dick, would probably do it himself, since he has always been in love with Nix and he knew it long enough to know he couldn’t help it. Thinking about future and how he liked to think about them in nice evenings enjoying each other companion, but with one of them probably being caressed for the other.

On the other hand, Nix thought that Dick didn’t like him in that way, in the passion, romantic way, the way Nix really felt towards his best friend but never talked about it before.  He had, of course, kissed him back because he was trying not to hurt Nix, to not be another emotional problem to him, because he knew Dick wanted to help him, had always wanted  _ to help him _ , even maybe in these ways that they probably both knew were wrong. Nix knew about Dick’s first kiss, with a boy. He knew Dick was not straight, but desiring and loving Nix back was another reach.

The two of them would think that the other didn’t like him as he liked the other, that the other was too good for him to be liked by the other in those complicated ways. They shouldn’t feel what they felt. They were working against nature, at least the one approuve by men and God and taking the other in that mess which was feeling attracted to the same sex seemed bad and mean, didn’t it? Different kind of worlds and attractiveness which they could not wait for, because they were not what the other was looking for.

 


	3. The Trip

 

_ It was a surprise, a considerable surprise when Dick got to know about Irene. Dick got to know about her first as a “certain lady in Albourne” (the only lady of Albourne Nix would ever talk about); but even at the time, he hadn’t even gotten to see her face or even gotten to know her name, while the war was going on and Nix sometimes escaped, through his weekend passes, to England to see her. Now Irene – and it was somehow hard to get used to saying her name – was Nix’s fiancée and Nix had not even bothered telling Dick about it; he had gotten to know through other people - through Blanche, specifically. She found it odd that Dick didn’t know and he couldn’t blame her. He felt somehow embarrassed and hurt by the fact that he seemed to have been the last one to know. _

_ Not long after Nix married her, while Dick was still there. Dick probably was invited, formally, by the company, as one of its employees but he didn’t go for this or any other reason. He can’t remember which reason led him to not go but any one of those he could think of was a good reason not to go. Nix didn’t make sure he would go, so he didn’t make sure either. There were many reasons for not go and few ones to go and as much as Nix didn’t mind his presence – or non-presence, better saying – he preferred to keep his pride. _

_ In general he didn’t quite pay attention to Dick those days, either way. _

_ Lewis seemed to live in his own bubble those days. Always at home – and Dick had been invited at the mansion a couple of times, mainly in their first days of marriage, when the couple had been back from honeymoon –   drinking non-stop while he met people Dick had never heard about, Nix didn’t seem the man he had met in Fort Benning. He had always drinking back then, it was true but not to the point of completely and entirely numbness. _

_ The people around them seemed to not notice how changed Nix was. _

_ At every moment people started laughing loudly, Dick felt like waking up from a nightmare to another, really strange, new one. He looked at the people and they cheered him with their drinks. Dick barely could smile politely because that was just too much of a dystopia to him. He glanced back at Lew who seemed to have a laugh of his own and he couldn’t stop wondering what the hell happened. What were those people doing to him? _

_ Against his chest, Nix had his eternal metallic flask. His lips curved in an ironic smirk as his eyes seemed lost in another life or dream Dick couldn’t reach. He was curved against a corner of one of his sofa, his thumb probably caressing the cool glass from the other side, the one against his chest. Completely alone and within his own dream – or nightmare. _

_ Another round of laughters would wake Dick up from his own train of thoughts. _

 

-X-

After about one and half hour later as they had estimated to meet, they were together again; looking at the sea down below from the  Rickenbacker Causeway  to avoid each other’s eyes. They were early to their meeting, both of them as they both felt the same overwhelming anxiety, the same insecurities; they were so completely ignorant of their mutual romantic feelings. They had imagined the worst outcomes when all they needed to do was ask.

Dick took the lead this time, almost touching Nix's arm instead of talking. Their lives had always been like this: they didn’t need to talk to understand each other and if they needed some kind of confirmation or hint, they would look at the other and whether there was still a doubt there they would be sure with the touch, a simple touch, merely a pat on the back or a grab around the arm.

But it was a delicate time, so Dick let his hand fall a few inches before Nix and just talked, quietly, almost dryly, trying to not be as mean as he could:

"So we get there across the bridge by car?"

Nix would just nod, as tired as he was. However he knew Dick probably wouldn’t look at him any time soon like he had before, thus he answered in words as well:

"Yeah." he sighed then they started their walk, almost beside each other, sometimes one in front and the other behind, trying not to lose their way, from beside each other, though.

They made their way to the station parking lot together, taking Nix’s car for the trip across the bridge which would at last lead to the Key Biscayne Island – which couldn’t be their goal since it was a three hour trip and they had work the next morning. Nix walked slowly, avoiding looking at Dick as he imagined he would see something in Dick’s eyes he didn’t want to see - probably pity or discomfort. Any of those things that he knew would break his heart once more and he didn’t need it from Dick; not being loved back was a thing, being treated differently by his best friend was the end he couldn’t reach.

They hopped in the car and took off in complete silence. The only sound they could hear was the satisfying sound of the wind running lazily through the car window and hitting their napes which caused a good relief from the hot weather. The station was almost empty at this hour of shift changes. The sun was about to set on the horizon and the sky had a really soft red tone mixed with orange and purple. Soon the engine was added to the wind sound and a couple of other car engines.

The traffic was almost getting at its busiest point but they had come out before six pm so they were having a good time at the bridge. Dick looked out the window at the sea. It looked wonderfully dark blue-green from up there. In the day, it looked lighter green and one could see some things inside the water but at this hour, the sea seemed to get colder and darker. He’d like to dive in it anyway.

“Did Taylor liberate Buck and Malarkey?” Nix asked, a bit amused, but he was trying not to be lenient, nor being petty, smiling at that. The two men had been under arrested for public disturbance all night at the former day and when Nix had come to his shift they were nowhere to be seen anymore. By the report, neither Dick nor Nix knew the nature of the disturbance – Nix, though, could imagine bawdily which kind of suggestive disturbance it was for the ridiculous lack of details but he wouldn’t speak up about that, despite being as much passionate as he was in disliking Buck.

On the other hand Dick could almost sense the bite scent of Nix’s amusement. Turning his head, the ginger arched an eyebrow. Being honest, he expected better from the men he had served with but still they were dear to him and deep inside, he knew they were honest and good people just having lapses of judgment; they both just happened to be pretty reckless sometimes, so he wouldn’t complain about Taylor’s action.

“Yeah,” Dick answered, slowly.

Nix frowned a little, probably waiting for something more; in no way Taylor would let them go easily and Nix knew that pretty well.

“After a big lecture, of course,” Dick pointed out because he knew it was necessary; even though, well, he loved the men he had as his brothers since Toccoa and alike places, got even closer to them – if it was possible – some years after the war, moments in which they met each other a couple of times in casual and not beforehand planned meetings. He would’ve never imagined seeing them again there, though. Especially doing something against the law and being arrested. “Buck should know better though, being a district attorney.”

Nix couldn’t help but smirk a little looking at the road as he drove the car through the traffic-free bridge. The two other men had come to Miami on vacation and had already found the way to their station, but not through the best ways. He himself still didn’t have the best of relationship with Buck – he still hated most jocks -, but as they kept working together more and more, Nix and Buck found a balance to bear each other and to not be demoted by starting petty arguments,  mainly in front of Dick.

He knew though that Dick had more than once talked to Buck about this kind of behavior, while they were in war even, overseas or not. But Dick knew as well as him that men would do whatever they wanted to do anyway, the only thing he could do – because Nix wasn’t a good example of righteousness either, so he couldn’t really help in that – was try to advise others to do the right thing which, in Dick’s words, would probably lead to the least wrong action or  at least  a carefully thought-out action.

“Glad that you two are behaving, ” Dick commented suddenly with a tiny smile, staring at the dark sea down the bridge, through the window.

Nix shot him an incredulous glance as if Dick was purposely making fun of him (and he was a little bit), his not so amused sly smirk sparkling in his eyes even as his lips barely moved. Nix shrugged at last, rolling his eyes as they came back to the road:

“Everything for you, baby.”

Dick frowned at that, looking confused back to Nix as if asking if he should take that as a teasing or something else but it just took a glance over Nix, who was rolling his eyes as he turned his back to Dick, that Dick realized that there was no need to worry about that. He shook his head and retreated his face to the window. Why was he overthinking because of something so small?

Coming back to the conversation, he replied:

“Thank you, then.” 

He then smirked although he tried not to. He was just incapable of not loving Nix and his humor as long as the man was not degrading himself to him, neither were making fun of Dick’s worries – although Dick could understand why he did that, specially remembering in which situations they had been, like that time in that basement in Holland – Dick was pretty attached to Easy back there and Nix knew he had to let go as much as him, so he tried to lighten their moods anyway.

Having these memories in mind, the bridge looked smaller, faster to pass through, distant from them or just a merely scenery to their banter. For those minutes, Dick remembered why they worked together so well, why they were friends, why they couldn’t stop being friends although he knew his passion for Nix was real and its flames still burnt bright inside his chest. Maybe if he found a wife and Nix found his path, maybe in a future they could be just pals and war feelings would be distant enough to their own cure.

Looking at the sea, they seemed pretty small, him, Nix, the car. Everything around them that wasn’t the sea and the bridge looked as much innocuous as they did. How weird was that someone can fall in love with another person and not think of any other in no particular way that could distract him from the former person? The world was so big and still he had his favorite someone in this world. Nix. Nix was a bright star in his personal universe and he couldn’t help staring at how bright and intense it looked, although it ended up hurting him sometimes.

 


	4. The Breaking Point

 

_ It was a chilly night in Jersey. The sky was painted in orange and pink shades; the day ending for the night to come as darker as the sky got. _

_ Nothing - the nature or the society that surrounded them - seemed to have noticed the difference in the atmosphere – although Dick felt that the air was heavier than normal, the thick lump into his throat unable to solve itself, even the help of the saliva that was as thick.  _

_ New Jersey’s night, actually, looked as cool and deep involved with its own nature - as always - to notice the death of one of its sons and the consequences of it in the community which surrended its existence. _

_ None, besides the people that had gotten to talk to Stanhope, seemed to have had any kind of reaction to his death. _

_ Dick, who wasn’t a big fan of Lew’s dad, had had his own reaction to the old man’s death. _

_ Dick hated thinking and feeling like this, but there was some relief in having the elder Nixon dead. For one, he knew Blanche was better off without him in her life, even when he had married again after their affair. And then, Lew had had an awful relationship with his dad. It sure had been strange to see them hanging out, drinking late at night as Dick had witnessed a couple of times, but Dick quite understood that even when Lew strongly disliked his dad, he still looked for connection with his old man; it just seemed natural, the way things were supposed to be. _

_ Dick walked up the wide street that gave way to the Nixon mansion. The place was wide, and scattered around were huge mansions along the block. Dick didn’t look at them with much curiosity anymore. He had known and gotten tired of the view, of the things that he had come to relate to the neighborhood. He had witnessed much of Lew’s new behavior here and it felt quite awful to see a friend giving himself away to numbness and a life of fantasies and only that. _

_ His feet seemed to know the way better than he had ever supposed, because while he wondered and thought about Nix, he didn’t pay much attention to the pace but still there he was, on the gates of the mansion. There was no-one to liberate his entrance so he pushed the opened gates from his free will. He looked around. Everything seemed quiet until he heard a sharp sound and something breaking, probably against a wall. His first instinct would probably be running inside to see if someone was hurt but he was too numb himself to walk out of that stupor.  _

_ He figured that Lew was probably breaking bottles against the wall, maybe screaming at them all that he hadn’t been able to in that house in Germany, since there he didn’t have the privacy and the space to do it, not in the way he had here in his own house, his huge mansion full of rooms he probably often forgot they existed. It was something he expected, that was just it. He hadn’t well – if anyhow – anticipated how was he gonna feel about that when he got to see Lew. _

_ “You goddamn prick! Why are you fucking dead now that I’m back?” Nix screamed, smashing another empty wine bottle against the earlier clear white wall. His hands were dark pink and had some scratches - probably due to the broken glass – between his knuckles and especially between the thumb and the index finger, the blood there seemed darker and covered great part of the ridge of the skin between his fingers. _

_ It was nevertheless shocking to discover the scene, he realized as he walked slowly inside, in the dark where Lew was. He had never seen something like this. He had heard of Lew breaking into liquor stores during the war but this? He had never seen it with his own eyes, had never heard Nix screaming with so much anger and hate and resentment, completely unaware of Dick’s presence there – because he couldn’t know Dick was there, seeing him, hearing him scream to the walls and -maybe- that was the only reason he was still doing so. _

_ “Your piece of sh-“ He stopped, his back tensing up. Dick was even more startled now that Nix had stopped mid-sentence and turned his head to the side as if listening to someone behind him, maybe him – Dick? He pursed his lips and waited for the worst but Nix snorted and dropped his arm with the bottle between his injured hand. He started crying, sobbing quietly.  _

_ “You’r-,”  _

_ He then let the bottle slide through his fingers, making a thudding sound as it slid across the floor, and he crouched with the heels of his hands  over his forehead. _

_ “Why, dad?” he asked more soberly, bringing his palms to his wet eyes. _

_ Dick could barely believe in what he was seeing. Lew was crying…because of his father’s death. If Stanhope had been a better father, if he at least had treasured Lew at some point in their lives, Dick could understand it better but that wasn’t what the case, what Lew had lived through, that wasn’t what Nix had told him. Still, he couldn’t forget that it was still Nix’s father, it was still expected of him to love him and try to make him proud. _

_ The atmosphere was so damn thick and hot that it felt hard to breathe. Outside it was almost cold but here, it felt like a damn oven ready to sweat them out as much as it possibly could.  _

_ When Nix realized Dick’s presence, he barely swallowed a hiccup. His eyes were wide, his lips were parted, his jaw was slack. Dick didn’t know what to do, if he should ask if Nix needed anything, or just pretend he had never been there and just turn around and let his best friend to his own demons. However, it couldn’t be like this, he couldn’t leave Nix in that state. He was about to step forward, glancing up to meet his best friend’s eyes when Nix seemed to recover his probably former expression and hardness. _

_ “Fu-fuck off, Dick.” He could barely form the swear word. He was too respectful to Dick to swear to him like that, normally. _

_ At that Dick stopped on his tracks, his blood seemed frozen as his body went somehow completely numb. He couldn’t swallow the thick lump that seemed stuck into his throat, either. He stared at Nix blankly, astonished as Nix stared at him back.  Dick could barely see Nix but somehow he could see the traces of his figure, turned to him. _

_ Nix’s breath was loud and his whole body seemed to move with it. He was having a really hard time, Dick have been able to listen to and now see it, being physically translated to Nix’s body. He looked completely unsteady over his feet, swinging slowly to the sides, trying to focus his best friend while the alcohol didn’t seem to let him. The little he could see of Nix’s eyes, though, was thanked to the sparkling in those dark eyes. _

_ “There’s nothing for you here, Dick,” Nix stated harshly, his lips seemed to curl in anger. _

_ Dick felt his own body shake at those words, although he tried to keep himself steady enough so Nix wouldn’t see how it hurt,  because those words hurt more than he had ever expected them to. They had had tough moments before, but it was directed to him now, all of that pain. _

_ Still he had given up on Nix for too long by then. He had allowed Nix to go down by himself, without ever asking if Lew needed help to get up. Dick had tried to put in his mind that he had helped Nix as much as he could but he didn’t. As much as he felt the need to, Dick had never before being honest and harsh at Lew, asked the exactly words ‘do you need help?’ or ‘I want to help you’. _

_ Nix’s face was tensed, he just seemed to be about over the edge because of all what he felt and didn’t want to show, that he tried to hide so desperately. _

_ He was unable to restrain a shaking breath, though. It was getting more and more difficult to conceal the feelings inside. _

_ It was true Dick could barely see Nix in the dark, besides the shape of his outlines; but his jaw - oddly the only part of his body, besides the bust - was illuminated by the street light and Dick, observing, could recognize the pattern of a shaking jaw. His body - and his whole self - seemed to show more and more as his body seemed to move by its own will. _

_ He imagined Nix was shaking all over his body. His face seemed to wriggle and then her started sobbing out loud. _

_ “Goddammit, Dick. Go the fucking,” he swallowed a hiccup, curling down around himself, “Away, for crying out loud!” Lowering his head between his knees and then bringing the two knees against his ears. _

_ It was too much, Dick could see it, too much for asking for help, too. _

_ Dick let Nix for a time and then he said: _

_ “I’m going nowhere.” _

_ Nix stopped for a moment, as if he had just recognized Dick was still there. Dick realized that, Nix seemed somehow surprised. _

_ Dick walked to Nix and before Nix could move against him or away from him, Dick kneeled in front of Nix and caressed Lew’s knee. _

_ “Hey,” Dick called, gently. _

_ Nix’s eyes went up, from behind the knees and looked at Dick. From closer, Dick could see how red those expressive eyes were, how much pain he seemed to feel and not being able to hide anymore. He knew it wasn’t all about Stanhope but also about having no more family besides his wife - who wasn’t even there, when he needed her the most and still Dick wouldn’t blame her; both of them were in an awful spot, Nix had his alcoholic problem and she had Nix smashing bottles against their walls.  _

_ Dick kept caressing the knee with his thumb rubbing gently the bone while watching Nix crying in silence. Nix needed the space, Dick knew, but he also needed someone to tell or better show him he wasn’t alone and that things changed with time and company, the pain smoothed and the memories had their most strong colours faded away after a time, living other experiences and having new better memories. _

_ Nix at last didn’t pull away and bit by bit he leaned onto Dick until he got to lay down on his lap and started sobbing loudly, forgetting the shame and the fear he seemed to have to expose that side of him, that side that showed so much emotion, that wasn’t the one that could be deemed as the tough one, like when he was drinking and smashing bottles against his dad’s study. _

_ He didn’t remember much of the days after or that night, but Dick quite remembered of Lew falling asleep on his lap as Dick stared at the fireplace, watching the flames dancing. It was hot and then cold and then hot again, feelings influencing their senses, even when there was a fireplace in front of him. His fingers ran down Lew’s locks when he remembered taking a nape sat. _

_ - _

_ Not long after that, Dick told Lew about his secret. About a boy he used to know all too well, who smiled and laughed a lot and resonantly; he kind looked like Harry, he thought out loud, as he told Nix the story of his first crush - Nix would frown at the comparison, thoughtful but Dick didn’t mind, it was enough that Nix respected him and his past; letting Dick talk freely. _

_ Dick told him about the way he came to realize he liked the boy, in a little unique way and then they ended up kissing in a saunter they did through the neighborhood farms in Lancaster. Of course, they did it in a hid spot. Something already told them that they shouldn’t do it, they shouldn’t act like this in front of other people, at least. Back then, though, they didn’t understand what was supposedly wrong with them. _

_ Nix just nodded as Dick explained his feelings, his impressions of the past. It seemed that Dick’s past stories had woke him up from a really really long dream that he was finally aware of his surroundings and of Dick in front of him. He still sipped his whiskey through the pauses Dick did but he seemed absorbed enough on them to drink as exhaustive as before. It probably happened a week or two after Dick found Nix in that state. _

_ Now Dick was trying to help Lew to sober up for once and for all. It hurt, both of them, Nix physically, Dick emotionally, but it need to be done – Dick would say while he patted Nix’s back as Nix threw up on his golden toilet at the Nixon Mansion. _

_ There were nights, Nix woke up from nightmares and nights that he wouldn’t sleep as he fell back to alcohol and then proceeded to talk back to old demons and ghosts in sleepness nights.  _

_ Those weren’t easy days. It wasn’t even just days, it was several hard months to live through. Nix went and came back from his relapses, but now he was trying to indeed refrain himself from drinking, from abusing the substance that just took him back to nightmares and memories he didn’t want to live again. _

_ Not so many weeks after that day Dick found Nix drinking to death, Irene was asking for the divorce. _

_ That night Nix drank a lot again, Dick was sure that he was trying to poisoning himself but he went back from the stupor he put himself in the following day, although he kept in the hospital one or two days after that. _

_ Dick couldn’t blame him. Nix was all alone; despite of him being there, he was just one person and he wasn’t exactly family, in a more technical way of the word. Luckly, though, Dick was able to take Nix back from those nigthmares and then they end up deciding it was time to change and move from those memories. _

_ Soon they would be wondering about moving out. _   
  
  
  



	5. A Day Off

"So we do it through the bank?” Dick asked, turning to look at Nix.

Nix glanced up and nodded in silence. Their trip was being really quiet and no sound could be listened, because there was none, besides the noise of their slippers breaking some old dry leaves in the way and the chirp of birds at the distance. Nix didn’t like this, but he didn’t feel in the mood to receive any dry treatment that Dick could give him, not in the middle of their walking up, but Dick started talking himself, so he just played along:

“How did you know about this?” Dick added, looking back at Nix, again. A wrinkle of curiosity on his forehead.

“Well, I have my sources.” Nix answered lightly,  shrugging, reminding Dick of their old times.

“Of course you do.” Dick said, chuckling for the first time in days and Nix could not repress the smirk that popped up on the corner of his lips.

“Old habits don’t change,” he replied melodically as it was an old joke.

Both of them chuckled in their own personal spaces and then they got quiet once more, but in a better quiet than before, now it was a choice rather than the only possibility they found to deal with the awkwardness of all those days. Also, some kind of fresh hope started growing into their hearts for their friendship; at least their friendship which was the most important matter for both of them.

Not even twenty minutes later, they were already at the beach seafront. A small space for an entire beach, at least compared to other Miami’s beaches, but still beautiful in its own size. It was like a yard, but with a sea going around the fences and beyond.

Dick could not be more surprised. Nix had told him a lot about the place when they were back at the station, but he never would have imagined such a beautiful landscape; he had never seen something like it, and even Austria hadn’t felt this right, that intimate and inviting to a personal relaxing moment. It wasn’t that Nix hadn’t been descriptive enough – and he mostly was - but the little beach was mind-blowing. It was indeed perfect for him: isolated thus quiet and peaceful, refreshing by the soaked winds coming from the mix of drops of seawater into the dry wind, while the warmth had its source in the sunlight; besides all of those sensations, the sight was perfect and mirrored all of those sensations the others senses could feel; summoning up it was perfect in all its beauty and thoroughly coziness.

“Well, it’s beautiful, Lew.”

While he nodded, mumbling in agreement, Lew watched the sun set on the horizon. He never got tired of the view of these places, the peace it could bring to his soul. It was special even when Nix didn’t have any special memory related to it; it was just special for its own beauty and quiet. A pleasure which only nature and art could give to the men and even when he had seen places like these before, in the long and short trips he had all over the country with his family. The pleasure that a beautiful natural place could give him was always new and refreshing. Never the same, even when he was again in a place he could say he knew.

“Yeah.” Nix’s voice came out husky after being caught in his throat ; he slid the hand over Dick’s shoulder lightly as in a half pet and half rubbing. “Yeah, really good stuff. I told you:only the best for Mrs. Nixon’s baby boy.”

Dick turned to Lewis, looking at him with a light expression and a tiny smile on his lips. He almost certainly didn’t realize it, but Dick was looking at Nix with the eyes he always had for Lew, a stare of love, respect, appreciation, admiration, tenderness. His chest slowly falling as he exhaled his deep breath before he could start to mumble and say things he would probably regret to say, and then he looked around, back to the sightseeing.

“Thank you.” Dick murmured, trying to rub down the emotion in a short reply. 

While Dick was admiring the sight, Nix started putting in practice the plan he had in mind since he had asked Dick to come. He started taking off his clothes as Dick was too busy in his own thoughts and soon pushed the redhead aside. After that, he was running whilst taking off his clothes, screaming as he was getting faster and faster. Nix ran to the open sea with some kind of bliss he hadn’t felt in years, maybe it wasn’t happiness, maybe it was just the thrill but it still felt like being alive all the same. 

“That’s the best Dick Winters can do?” he shouted out with a big grin spreading across his lips, turning his head to draw Dick’s attention and see if he was coming too, his arms raised to the sky, adrenaline running through his body, giving him the courage he wasn’t having in the last few days, maybe months. Gosh, he was letting himself get drained by his own brooding.

The redhead laughed, shaking his head and then he started running towards the dark haired man ahead of him, taking his own clothes off in the way, murmuring to himself:

“You are crazy…” a smile covering his lips insistently. “You are sooo-so…crazy” he whispered before he could start mumbling praises for Lewis Nixon, about how he loved and was always encharmed for Nixon’s joy and young spirit.

Dick ran into the water and almost fell as he stubbed his toe on a rock. Nix chuckled as he tried to help Dick to regain his balance back and almost lost his breath when Dick regained his balance, Nix lost his own.

“Calm down, Dick.” He laughed, hands trying to grasp any of Dick’s parts to get himself out from the water. “Don’t kill me now.” He chuckled, splashing water on the redhead who was trying to raise Nix up on his feet again.

“And you don’t slip on me.” They said at the same time, taking a chuckle from both of them while Nix rose, supporting himself on a rock. 

“I promise.” He made a scouting sign of commitment, smiling as the boy he was still. “Not gonna slip on the Major.”

Dick smiled back at Lewis and pushing Lew to the water, they waded into the water until it came up to touch their thighs. The water was cold but the weather was hot so it felt refreshing after a couple of dives. Nix soon went on his back as the water allowed them to stay put and Dick kept watching Lewis float. 

He could imagine Lewis Nixon on his Olympic pool in his too big house. He had seen Nix going to the pool a couple of times, if he was being honest. What he actually had never seen was him enjoying it. Most of the times they got, better saying, Nix got into the water was mostly out of despair and impulsiveness.  It seemed that Nix wouldn’t go to his parents’ pool to relax.

Mostly he would dive into the water while drunk and he would scream at 2 am about how horrible the water felt, in a general sense, how awful everything felt in that goddamn place - in his words. Dick was so relieved that Nix didn’t drink as much. It had seemed to have made him good, that is, to get out of that house, to just let all and everything behind and start all from zero, with no plans or strings attached.

“Aren’t you just thinking too much?” Nix asked, sliding through the surface of the water beside Dick who was still on his feet as he stared at nothing in particular.

“Mhm?” Dick answered. He was thinking too much, he would end up realizing but it wasn’t like he would do it at the time Nix asked him. “Yeah, I think you are not wrong.”

“Just loosen up yourself, Dick.” Nix smirked although deep inside he was worried, not that Dick was sad but he knew how much the man hold to things for too long, although it was him who had the vices too difficult to get away from.

Dick nodded, trying to get out of his head for once. Sometimes it was difficult to get out of his head when he was in situations like these - nobody around, no noises, no work to busy himself with. Although he knew he should enjoy more his reality - and that was the smoothest one in years - more instead of still thinking about things that could not be changed or worked out there. Dick then pushed off the ground and went onto the surface of the water and, smiling at Nix who watched him out of the corner of his eye, Dick dove under Nix with a big impulse.

Going under the water surface, that deep, getting further and further felt like the peace he had dreamed of in Normandy. It felt like a speed race, a contest and he was getting there, at the end of it. Finally, he touched the ground and turning his body upside down, Dick pushed himself back to the original position until he reached the surface of the water. He was breathless and his head seemed full of water, but suddenly he was grounded on their actual experience.

“It’s really cold down there,” Dick informed, and then he smiled seeing Nix smirking at him while watching him. Just the sound of the water waving for the wind around them.

“I won’t go there, then,” Nix replied, amused after a couple of minutes sharing a silent smile with Winters while he floated smoothly on the surface of the water his fingertips barely skimming into the water mass.

“You should,” Dick pointed out, arching an eyebrow. It was cold but it was awesome, it woke up his senses like nothing had in awhile. He then brushed his hair back, smoothing it down. “Sometimes the cold can wake you up.”

Nix just snorted in disbelief, his body gently waving in the water as he kept his feet high above the seabed, his senses being engulfed by the sense of peacefulness a moment in silent in a natural setting gave him, away from Toccoa or Bastogne, the beaches of Normandy and the high places on Holland and Austria. War barely a memory they shared once, when they were pretty young and barely believed in the idea they would ever die – before any of that had happened just in front of their eyes.

“I was there. You were there too,” Nix answered at last, “My body was so awake that it was numb,” he pointed out, with an index finger pointed to Dick, or wherever Nix thought the man was by the sound of his voice.

And then Dick remembered Bastogne but that was completely different. There they had been, wearing clothes that should make them feel warm, but making them feel even colder because of the sweat and the snow that took its time to turn into water and still kept over their skin while they could barely bath, although Dick did and it wasn’t the best thing, neither was it complete – French baths were French baths, not for him or them. In Bastogne there was just the same weather every day and a sinister state of completely stillness that didn’t fail to provoke on them horror and, even despair .

Here the water deep down was cold as hell but the sun was still hot on his back, very hot indeed.

“Sure it is exactly the same.” Dick replied, sarcastically at first, rolling his eyes “I see your point, though.” 

He understood Nix’s words, what they made reference to, a sensation they sometimes felt a desperate need to never ever remember to feel again, or even similar ones. It wasn’t like they didn’t feel as if they were back there when the nights got too cold during long winters – not that it happened much in Miami – but just the thought of it made them shiver and feel some kind of psychosomatic cold that let their fingers shaking and next stiff, until they started aching as they did in Bastogne. Everything seemed to ache in the Ardennes Forest. The cold was so palpable that it felt like a symptom of a disease. You’ll always have the scar, especially on cold nights during bedtime, you could feel it aching even though there was no real mark on the skin. 

Nix just nodded and closed his eyes as he went flat on his back again and started floating like before, on that calm water surface; it didn’t stop amusing Dick how much the waves seemed in a kind of agreement with Nix and so  just wouldn’t pass over him, Dick observed. Flowing so easily and so calmly under the sound of distant birds flying away. It was so nice and effortless, why couldn’t they be like this all the time? The days they had been kept apart – he had kept them apart, but what difference did it make now? – it had been horrible and terribly slow, but these times, these times flew like the birds in the sky: smoothly, quickly, and effortlessly. 

His logic couldn’t with the kind of train of thought which led him to just stay away from Nix as if his heart or his mind could forget the feelings he had bear since Toccoa. It seemed a good idea at the time; he had longed for Nix in such low-key ways and at some point it felt like he could overcome it during the war. But in that moment, when the bullet whistled through the thin air, hitting to Lewis’ helmet. He should have known by then.

“You are thinking too much again,” Nix slurred, still floating on the water more or less beside the ginger, his eyes still closed but a small wrinkle showing up on the middle of his forehead. Why did Dick have to think so much about everything? Not that he didn’t like it – that is, Dick Winters –, but sometimes he sensed Dick really struggling with his own mind, it felt like an iche, an ache even on his own skin. It bothered him, like an insect wound that didn’t stop showing how much it was there. “I can hear you.”

Dick just snorted softly, looking down at his feet deep down on the water, blurred by the distance. It wasn’t an erroneous impression, he really thought too much. But Nix knew he was like that, he had always known. He just couldn’t help those days, then, they were just so on the edge again. Like when they were on Jersey and Nix’s father started calling him for drinks and meetings late at night, out of nowhere. And then Nix started showing up drunk every night.

“Just forget it all for a second.” Dick looked at Nix for the first time during all that thinking, and then nodded slowly, acknowledging that it was a good advice and then Dick passed to wash his face with the water, trying to wake himself from his nightmares and his doubts. He needed this, to just let go and feel by his fingers and his skin and smell the sunscreen on both of their faces - if Nix had heard him for once. It had been a first time Nix used sunscreen on his own, but just because Nix was too self-conscious to not to, especially because he was going out with his best friend and secret crush, someone he needed to make right for. Especially after all those stranger days.

“Mhmm, what about a race to the shore?” Dick asked, smiling at Nix who slowly brought his eyebrows together.

“You are gonna make me do it, aren’t you?” Nix asked moodily, although deep inside he was happy that Dick was trying as much as him to be good with each other again.

“Yep,” Dick answered and he patted Nix’s on the belly, just as he normally did when they used to book the same place and needed to sleep in the same room and Nix wouldn’t wake even if Dick brought him his whiskey or breakfast on the bed, because Nix was just too in love with his bed at any given morning.

Nix, though, took his time enjoying the sunlight on his forehead as he arched back, closing his eyes. He was not really happy with the idea of diving again in that cold water but then that was Dick and he would do anything for Dick, especially because he knew how they would laugh their asses off as soon as it started because Dick was too competitive and Nix too moody to not keep complaining during the whole process while swimming back, beside his best friend.

 


	6. Confessions

 

  
Running back to the sand, they laughed, gasping as they pushed each other to reach their own clothes first, in order to dry the body faster, the freezing water piercing the flesh like needles. It seemed like they were teenagers all over again and if they were gonna be honest with themselves, it wasn’t the first time.

Dick took a shirt first, just to realize it was Nix’s.

“Alright, give me the other one,” He asked, holding the clothing behind his hips as he offered the other hand.

“You first,” Nix teased, hiding Dick’s own shirt.

“Come on, Lew, it’s freezing,” Dick tried, soon pulling an arm to sneak the clothing from Lew’s back.

He gasped as Lew did and jumped backwards:

“Oh, that’s dirty, Winters!”

Dick blushed a bit but just rolled his eyes and tried the move again.

“I am freezing here, alright?” He held his arm over his chest height, almost on Nix’s throat. “It’s a matter of necessity.”

“Yeah, it is.” Then Nix took Dick’s shirt off his hand – actually, it was his but before it was in Dick’s hands. “But the idea of diving in that freezing water was yours, so I dry myself first.”

Dick rolled his eyes again as he took the shirt Nix was offering him back and pulled the clothing across his chest.

Then Dick sighed, feeling the warmth engulfing him again while the drops of water from his hair refreshed his face. The weather was still pretty good and warm, so the two combined was a good idea.

He looked around and found Nix sitting on the sand, his swim trucks and the navy shirt over his chest. He scratched his wet dark hair and grimaced. Dick smiled at him.

“I mean, come on, that’s…cold. I didn’t remember it being that cold.”

Dick laughed out loud, smoothing his copper hair back and sitting in front of the other.

“Aren’t you just mixing up hotel pools with natural water?”

Nix almost smirked, but tried to hide it with a complaint. But then he agreed with Dick, more or less.

“Maybe…”

Dick gasped as he looked aside to Nix. He was lying on the sand with one of his hipbones on the ground, his head on his hand, a smirk on his lips.

For just a minute Dick thought that he had almost forgotten how it felt, how he felt when Nix smiled to him; because of him or something he had done. It was beautiful and breathtaking and Dick could barely look at it without starting to stare magnetically.

So his body burned in an urge to take it, to touch with his own lips and for just a second, Dick shut off his mind and bent towards his best friend. 

The kiss itself wasn’t a big deal, it was almost a peck: quick and sloppy; too quick to be appreciated, too soft to express the passion.

Nix looked up to Winters instantly after. His lips were parted; his eyes, wide and lost; the very image of surprise.

Lew’s lips moved to speak after a licking of lips but Dick took a quick breath and started to talk over him again:

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk about this. We don’t need to…” 

This was the moment Lewis was done tired of all those hide and seek games. If they needed to put a couple of things out, they would do it. He would do it, no matter how or if Dick wanted it, because it was becoming too much to bear.  He needed to tell his truth and be in peace with himself.

“No, Dick, stop this. We need to talk about this,” he said a bit louder, assertive. “We need to talk about us.” 

His body was raised by now, his eyes locked with Dick’s.

The redhead struggled to say something more. He knew who was right, who had been right all along. What could he say now?

“You don’t like me.” Nix sighed, eyes wandering, trying to avoid Dick; getting on the ground as shame flooded through him, burning the edge of his limbs as he thought about how much he had made Dick feel uncomfortable because of his feelings, stupid feelings.

“I like you!” Dick replied, frowning and sounding like Nix was insulting him.

They looked at each other again. Nix was speechless. What did that mean? What could it mean that made Dick push him away? Run away from him and his presence?

Then he broke the eye contact for a couple of seconds and continued:

“So…what’s the problem?” He raised his knees from the ground, hesitantly trying to get closer. His eyes back at Dick’s blue ones.

“It can destroy our friendship.”

“I don’t think…”

“We can’t be sexploit buddies, Nix!”

“Sex-…?” Nix started, beyond shocked with his lips parted; and then he started laughing. Tears fell from his eyelashes as the laughing got the best of him. “No…” he tried, but the laughing was not letting him and it was getting just stronger and stronger, while his belly was beginning to hurt.

Dick was horrified for the first time in years, he could not believe that Nix was thinking he was too much of a prude to be his friend or, any other nonsensical thing; the thoughts were drowning his rational side.

After some time, Nix got a good breath and looked up:

“Oh, Dick…” His smile was weak, then big, and then weak again. Dick have never seen him like this, not even when Nix had the habit to invade Dick’s office to annoy and tease his best friend during their time in Europe about all the paperwork Nix knew Dick hated to death.

“It’s not like that. Shit, Dick.” Nix croaked before his smile grew faint, his jawline lax from the laughter and the emotions, his lower lip trembling a bit once in awhile. “Not sexploit buddies, Dick.”

Dick’s eyes widened and he couldn’t help the shudder that ran through his body, making his shoulders to jerk a bit.

“So….?” Dick asked, struggling.

“You know, you used to be faster during the war.” Nix smiled, his breath slowing. He crawled just some inches or so closer to Dick and, approaching his face, Lewis leaned in to talk into Dick’s ear.

Nix licked his lips as he inhaled the air and Dick’s scent mixed with the sand he got in the water, looking for the strength to say what he had wanted to tell Dick all along and then he finally reached Dick’s ear with his lips, almost touching it.

“I love you, Dick Winters,” he whispered, bracing himself to keep from kissing Dick’s cute and freckled left ear.

It took a while for Dick to realize that Nix really said that he, Lewis Nixon, loved him, Dick Winters, in the same way he did. So as in a completely reactive reaction, Dick just parted his lips after that, gasping. He was so damn eager for a resolution, for some kind of intimate contact. His longing had lasted quietly for so many long and long years that this confession felt like the “yes” to his wish to go and kiss Lew.

He knew it wasn’t just like this. He needed to talk and ask permission and etc. The problem was that his body was figuratively screaming for it, because all it wanted was Nix’s lips against his, the tongue making its way inside his mouth, just like how Nix tried to do the first time a few weeks ago; which Dick thought would be the first and last moment he would find Nix’s pretty, full lips taking his with such a passion and desire that he would not find equal sensation ever again.

As Lew pulled away, Dick looked back at Nix, nibbling his lips as he thought carefully. Looking down at Lew’s lips, Dick asked for permission by slowly and shyly taking his hand to Lew’s nape and pulling himself forward, crawling on the sand so they could touch each other if it was what Nix also wanted - and he knew Nix probably wanted it but how was he just kiss Lew, without asking again? Nix looked down at his lips and nodded and so Dick leaned into him.

Dick hands ran over Nix’s hair and neck, one trying to loosen and the other trying to hold as indecision of what to do first couldn’t be conceal - although the mouths were already doing it all. He wanted to give into his passion, his feelings; showing his soul so Nix could see all of the love and everything good in between Dick felt for him. At the same time, he wouldn’t be Dick if he didn’t try to hold; hold his lover, his missing, his heartbeats, control the least he could.

On the other hand, Nix didn’t hold anything back, never, in any situation. He loosened as much as he could whenever or not he could. He was a man of everything or nothing and when he wanted something or someone, he wanted badly and Dick wouldn’t be an exception to the way he liked people and things; and God, Nix has never loved someone like he did Dick.

They were absolutely overwhelmed by that love, by the passion innate to their love but the world around them seemed in peace with the existence of this love - world which was that beach for now - so they were at peace after all, too. Nothing brought up the worries they would have to face when they got back to the city and to the people that condemned the existence of a love like theirs.

Dick raised his eyes as Nix pulled away; a smile was still present on his lover’s lips so Dick flashed a smile, too.

"Yes, Dick, I didn’t lie."

"I never said you did," the redhead hurried to say, but Nix just chuckled.

"You know, I’ve felt it for a time," Nix said, his elbows spreading on the sand, hands still around Dick’s face. 

Dick hadn’t even realized before, but they were lay one over the other now. Maybe that was the reason behind his hot belly, or it had other source.

"Before I had asked you to come," he continued, a bit more serious, running his thumbs over Dicks rosy cheeks, just over his cheekbones. “Long before.”

Dick stared back at Nix, no sentences formed into his mind, no hurry for the questions – although something bugged him.

"Me too," he finally said after some time as if he had held it back for years, locked in dreams he had never thought could come through to reality; something too far from their reality. He raised his legs so to get a better position.

"Yeah?" Nix chuckled, so happy that he could barely believe it. 

Dick had never seen him like this, besides a couple of times that he himself thought he couldn’t stop himself and not smile back as fully, as grateful to be able to see and produce this smile on that so tired man’s face.

“Yeah, it’s just…” he looked down for a bit, trying to strengthen himself to ask it. “Why did you marry again, then?” Why? He had asked for so many nights before sleeping. He had felt so hurt at the time, so put aside with no gentleness. He needed to know why, now that he could ask. Why didn’t Lew even talk to him first?

Nix didn’t seem comfortable to answer. His eyes casted down. He was ashamed, Dick could see it. Dick almost felt like maybe he shouldn’t have asked but then Nix did answer.

“I didn’t think it could happen,” he said, serious, “Us. It wasn’t supposed to happen and…Why would you want it? I had never been up to you.”

It hurt Dick, especially because it hurt Lew – Lewis was used to do it but that didn’t mean he should, that he deserved it! Dick’s face was almost wrinkling with worry and regret when Lew continued.

“But it did,” he opened a snarky smirk, shaking his head and blinking a little. “And I don’t mind that it did.” 

Oh, Dick knew he minded it and lot but nobody needed to tell him that.

Then Dick’s smile finally grew into a grin. His grin reached his eyes so fully now, that he had wrinkles around the corner of his eyes. His hands were finally reaching for Nix’s face and as he touched him, holding and caressing the other man’s face, Dick got closer to the other.

“I never thought…” Dick started in a low tone, suddenly a little more serious and attentive than before.

“That I was queer? Or more or less…?” He swung his head to the sides, chuckling.

“No. It wasn’t that,” he murmured, shaking his head, pulling Nix’s head a bit closer in follow as his knees slid on the sand closer to Lew’s body. 

Dick whispered against Nix’s face, a little of insecurity showing in the tone of his voice, “I never thought you would love me, not like this.”

Then Dick pulled Nix’s face still a little bit closer and then, almost closing the gap, he finished saying in an even lower tone, “I never thought you would want…”

But Nix didn’t let Dick finish his sentence and then he kissed his best friend again, a tender and slower kiss now, a kiss to show Dick how much he loved him and wanted to make him sure of it. Lewis’ fingers were softly scraping Dick’s scalp, and the other hand held the redhead’s neck with affection. 

“Want what?” Nix murmured against Dick’s face so close he still was, after pulled away, still with his eyes closed. “To be with you?” he continued, leaning back in again to give Dick another kiss. “To bear your perfect self?” he leaned a little down so to kiss Dick’s jaw line and let his mouth slide to the Dick’s ear “To make you happy?” He nibbled at it as Dick seemed to shudder and then Nix laid into Dick’s legs. “I want every one of these.” A tiny chuckle in his throat, between their kisses just to lean forward and continue kissing Dick.

“I am not…”

“Yeah, not perfect. Just almost.”

Dick turned his eyes skyward, although he imagined that people probably had thought it about him before. Not that he didn’t try to do his best every day, but that wasn’t exactly aiming for perfection, but rather a good sense of self and a good environment around him. Truthfully, it had never been something he mused a lot about. He had always had in mind that perfection was something human beings were incapable of doing; one of the reasons he hated Sobel for pushing them around knowing his ridiculous expectations. 

Nix, though, had other things in mind:

“Where did you get the ‘sexploit’, by the way?’” Nix frowned, chuckling a little as he thought about the word. Who was Dick getting these slang words from? It wasn’t from him. Normally, Dick disregarded most of the bad words or slang Nix used. And that wasn’t really the kind of slang they used to say back in the day either. It was a totally new thing.

Dick looked sheepishly at the ground, his face colored with red and his index finger running traces in the sand, making little forms on the so malleable ground.

“I…” He started but trailed off. After a time he looked up and shrugged. “You know the kids, they are always talking.” He licked his lips, “And they were talking about it and I thought it was...useful?”

He nibbled his lips as he glanced down again.

“So you just added it to your vocabulary?” Nix teased, holding and pulling Dick’s hand gently so Dick would have to look up at him again at some point.

“Yeah,” He shrugged again, a bit annoyed, and nervously said “I needed a word for…that. What could have happened between us, you know?”

“That wasn’t the word for that. That wasn’t sexploitation.”

“I figured.” Dick said drily, but his lips still slipping into a smile.

Nix laughed out loud, throwing his head back in glee. He couldn’t help but laugh at Dick’s insecurities and shyness. It was so damn cute and so different from his normal self. Normally, Dick would be the toughest leader, the man everybody could count on in combat, the man who lead them all but then, when it came to this Dick would be just that insecure and shy boy around him, especially when it was about girls, and maybe a boy, that boy. Now it was about them, about him - Lewis. Dick was trying to protect their friendship from their carnal desire. But their desire was not just that anyway. It had always been more than casual and quick, the thing between them.

“I would never, you know,” Nix pointed out, spreading his legs on the sand as he leaned on his palms behind his back. The sun was almost gone by now and the sky was already getting dark. Still, he felt the heat on his skin – although he felt the cold wind coming through as well. He smiled at the sky with closed eyes. Who would know it would end up that well? He couldn’t. He had been terrified the whole week, actually. Just some hours ago, he didn’t think he would have Dick again as before. He thought he would be a stranger to Dick from that time on because of what had happened between them.

Dick shrugged slightly, though. He knew Nix was right and he should’ve imagined that. But he was just so insecure. He felt so much for Nix, had for such a long time and now that things could come together, he could just imagine that things could go terribly wrong in the process. Like the days that followed Holland and then Bastogne. Those days had been the hardest days of them in the army and those months, stuck inside holes of the height of a small kid, didn’t seem to end. Every day seemed like another day to tire himself and getting older while the big (political) guys managed the war from their seats, drinking champagne and laughing with beautiful, young girls dancing for them.

Sometimes he got lost on those days and sometimes he got lost into Nix’s dark bright eyes.  He focused his eyes on Nix. He looked so damn good, his Nix was so damn beautiful. He was and had always been handsome - it was pretty marked - but nothing seemed to hint to the things and the times he had been through; the war times or the time he had been drinking to death in Jersey, for example. Dick hated to think about it, it still hurt for hundred of reasons; Nix’s abstinence problems, the absence of his best friend in his life in Jersey (even if it were just a door at the end of the corridor, he’d have preferred to have him around there, at sight reach), Lew crying over his father’s death. He shook his head and focused on Nix again and he was grinning at him, although for a second - and Dick saw it - there was a wrinkle of worry in his forehead. Dick looked, though, as if he was waiting for something, his lips parted, hands loosely rested between Nix’s waist and hips.

“Aren’t you gonna kiss me?” Dick asked amused, smirking a bit, stroking Nix’s sides softly. It was just so damn good to see his best friend alive and shining like this, like his soul had came back to his body.

“I might do that,” Nix grinned, licking his suddenly dry lips and leaning his head aside, his elbows hooking into the sand, his legs around Dick. “Would you want it?”

Dick made a half snort as soon as Nix leaned towards his mouth, catching his lips with fondness.

Kissing Lew was difficult to stop, his tongue tasted to grapes and every time Lew bit his lower lip or sucked his tongue, Dick felt excitement stirring wildly under his belly as if he had never kissed someone he truly and thoroughly desired, for more than a couple of months. Dick’s tongue tip pressed against the inner side of Lew’s mouth, his tongue never tired of wandering around the inside of that mouth.

It was still so surprising to Dick, being able to kiss Nix so freely. He couldn’t help but stare at Nix, amazed while he caressed the coloured cheek, the cheek Nix once had pulled away from his touch, that night in Holland when Dick could have maybe lost him forever: a kind of thought he couldn’t bear hold into his conscious for long, not without trying to scrap and conceal the memory with actions, like kissing Nix again.

“You are surprised,” Nix commented, watching as Dick’s blush bloomed red. Nix’s eyes were locked on his, seeming to be seriously wonder about his best friend’s impressions.

Nix may have thought they might have been pretty obvious about their feelings all those years, he sure wasn’t having the same impressions as before, meanwhile Dick seemed unsure of his own old impressions. Maybe, if it were other times and people were different, and it wasn’t the Earth they knew, maybe people would have pointed it out to them earlier and they could have lived it without feeling guilty.

“Of course I’m surprised” Dick replied, defensively.

Shouldn’t he be surprised? Nix was such a charming man, even a womanizer. Why would he want Dick in those so different ways? He didn’t need to, he could like any woman and Dick knew they would possibly fall for him at some point, but then Nix’s heart chose him.

“It’s because you can’t see what I see, how perfect you are to me.” And that was extremely sappy but then again, it rhymed too, so it kind looked a nice pick up line, maybe he could use it again another time when it had been quite forgotten by Dick, if they got to get old together as he would have dreamed of doing so many times. There was nothing more he wanted from his life. Dick was his designed life partner, that was for sure.

“But I’d already said that I ain’t perfect, Nix,” he sighed, smiling a little bit, with some rogue on his face. “You know that.” 

“No, maybe you are not perfect,” Nix agreed, “But it’s not like you don’t try, Dick.”

Dick just rolled his eyes, shaking his head while a chuckle escaped his throat:

“Shut up” he said affectionately, biting his lip, suddenly taking a look at Lew’s wet, red lips. He swallowed hard, they could not keep kissing as if they were allowed to do so, as if they weren’t threatened with arrest or murder for it – although they were at a isolated beach, they were still inside civilization and the mindset it had been created with. 

“Mhm, what’s the next stop, Cap?” Dick smiled, lifting his ass from the sand and brushed it off with his hands.

Nix made a peak with his lips as he whined in disapproval. He was so happy just being lazily beside Dick, kissing those pinkish lips as much as he wanted, whenever he felt like, leaned onto Dick’s warm and calm atmosphere. However, at the same time, he felt his body hurt at being in that position for too long, so he rose too, a lot slower than Dick, though.

“Mhmm, dunno,” Nix answered, lazily, scratching his head “I thought about…”

 


	7. Storm

 

Suddenly, a thunderbolt cut him mid sentence as well as it did the sky.

He looked up at the sky over their heads, suddenly it was getting darker and darker pretty fast, the clouds were gathering and he also sensed the upcoming rain by the scent of wet earth, although it was not even there yet. He straightened himself on his feet, looking at that dark navy sky amazed at the sudden change, the few first magnificient thunderbolts and then the wind getting stronger around them as well as the tree branches got wilder, the wind’s whistles suddenly pretty loud.

The rain came next with big icy drops and then as far as they could tell, the rain grew to a full size storm. Suddenly the sky was almost completely dark and the wind smelled hard of wet earth. The sea seemed wild in the distance, by its sound against the shore. Their hair was glued to their foreheads and the napes of their necks; all their sweat mixed with  the salty water from the sea, mixing now with the clean water of the sky. For a second, Dick couldn’t help but look amazed at the sky, too. How had all that happened? The sky was so bright just some minutes ago, or it was hours ago? He couldn’t recall at all. It looked a lot more like a dream, or two.

“Come on, Dick, we need to go!” Nix chuckled nervously, pulling Dick by the wrist as the man still watched the rain as if he had never seen rain in his whole life, as if the desert would be more recognizable. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to take rain showers near the ocean at this hour of the day.” He still smiled, although he was getting more and more worried by Dick’s sudden moment of introspectiveness.

Then Dick looked back at him with a tiny smile of daring and as if Nix could read his friend’s thoughts, and he thought he could pretty much since all those years of success, he answered:

“I swear to God that I did not know about this.” Nix panted with a partial grin on his wet full lips, wet by the tropical storm and swollen and darkened by passionate kisses and nervous bites; and he sure was feeling all of those features presented on his face, those had been sensed by him pretty thoroughly .

“I did not see it coming I swear,” he repeated, chuckling again, brushing the hair away from his eyes quickly and as much as he could arrange it. Dick just arched one of his eyebrow but didn’t say anything, he just stared back. Soon he started walking himself, this time pushing Nix forward with him.

Now, they hadn’t planned it; Nix really didn’t. He even used to watch the news in the morning but he didn’t really mind about paying attention, not even for the weather forecast. He should have thought about this, though, but he hadn’t. There was no use thinking about it, anyway. So he tried to shake away the turbulent thoughts.

They walked their path back as best as they could. So was this what the Pacific would have felt like? He was happy he hadn’t gone. Nix even thought that Dick agreed with him now, because that would have been a mess. All that water and grass and earth all the time on parts of their body they didn’t normally look a lot at, besides the lack of baths. And the bugs and the diseases. Jesus. He was really happy he hadn’t gone.

“Hey, Lew.” Dick pointed to the blocked road. Nix swore under his breath, the rain getting even colder and the sky even darker as they stopped to take a look at their misfortune.

Their eyes had to take a time to get used to the darkness that was overcoming the little remoted shore.

About three dark thick tree trunks were lay down, crossed one over the other, between them and the next village which gave way to the bridge, therefore to the city where they lived in. In the pit dark, the seemingly heavy trees were one over the other in odd angles, blocking their vision beyond that and their way. The path was not really far from the other side of the shore but far enough from their car and any place they could stay or ask for immediate help. There was no way they could come around that tonight, not without having to ask a lot of favours and maybe beg for anyone to put themselves in danger under that kind of storm.

It was just ridiculous.

Dick then pointed out that there was a humble house just a few miles from there, it kind looked like a shack.

“Look, Nix, there’s something at the end of the road.”

He really hoped it was a place they could stay for the night or at least call someone to their rescue; there was no way it would end well, being out in that strong storm.

“I hope we can stay the night.” Nix commented as if reading Dick’s head, unconsciously trying to dry his own wet forehead with his hand, which had been passed on his as well as lukewarm arm. It was just so wet, all of him, he couldn’t stand it with the heavy clothes, he felt just so cold with all of this together.

They started walking again, slowly though because of the clothes and praying they could reach the place soon because it was making them remember some times in the war that they wished they could happily erase from their memories. Just the memory brought back the sensation of the cold infiltrating their chests and it made them shake nervously by the cold water.

Going inside the little house, though, they felt an almost instant heat envelop their wet limbs that made them, ironically, shiver even more as they closed the door behind their backs. Another door inside creaked, and the sound of sandals could be heard from not far away. Soon a middle age, maybe 30 year old, blonde woman showed up behind a receptionist desk. Her curled blonde hair was barely tied on the back of her head, she was a lot shorter than them; she looked sympathetic with a soft smile on her colored red lips.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she welcomed them, her hands on the desk. She wore glasses and looked a little like an small brown owl.

Nix grinned at her, and walking towards her he spoke:

“Ma’am,” Trying to smooth his soaked hair with a hand, which just made him shiver with the drops running down his nape “Would you have some rooms?”

“Mhmm, let me see.”

She hummed, taking a black long notebook from one of the corners of the desk. She opened it and flicking through the pages, a few numbers and names showed up at most of the pages. There weren’t many numbers, but it seemed to be that a couple of people were at the same location as them.

“Yes, we do. But will you boys need more than one?” she asked, softly tapping a pen against the table while staring at the notebook as if trying to remember the exact spot to write their names and phone numbers down. “We have a room with two single beds and they are cheaper.”

Nix had long since given up on the excess of luxury of the Nixons but he wasn’t really expecting to be treated as if he had no money at all. Even though…He was not going to lie, he was really inclined to accept the offer and play the part so him and Dick could be together again.

“Mhmm, we’ll accept the offer, ma’am.” he said, ignoring the glance Dick shot him because he knew Nix was pretending to not be as rich as he really was and omission sometimes looked like lies in Dick’s book. However, he wasn’t all that against to be in the same room as Lewis; they had done the same in war so many times and, now, that they had discovered their mutual feelings, it was nuts to ignore it. He couldn’t. It was good and necessary to face it, although tempting – but what was the bad about that?

“That’s alright, then, it’ll be 100 dollars a day, gentlemen,” she replied with a sympathetic smile, soon leaning down so she could write down some personal information Lewis was giving her. What was good about being new in town was that nobody batted an eye at his surname because they didn’t know him; they didn’t know what family he had came from. There he was Lewis, not Nix or Nixon, but Lewis.

“The dinner will be served in half-hour,” she informed, giving Lewis the keys. “Room 6.”

Lew looked up and nodded, suddenly forgetting to smile and to be sympathetic, he was just so tired now that they had stopped in a warm spot for long than fifteen minutes. Nix was just turning his back to the woman when she called them back:

“Misters, don’t you want to change those clothes?”

She smiled with sympathy, turning around and entering an additional room behind the reception and dragging from there a wooden chest with some clothes.

“I don’t usually have a lot of clothes ready to sell, but…” She took a couple of formal clothes and a pair of pajamas from the truck with some socks. “I have these here and as there was a storm and you two are wet, I think you two could take some, right?” She smiled politely, putting the clothes on the counter and resting her palms over them.

Nix for a moment didn’t know what to do, surprised by the kindness of the house’s owner while Dick was about to thank her but politely refuse when Nix took the lead before Dick and his pride could go in between of their comfort:

“Sure,” he answered, coming closer, tapping his wet jacket pockets, and he continued “Gosh, thank you, ma’am!” Taking a look at the clothes closer.. “How will I owe you? I am really, really thankful…We really are,” he said, looking back at Dick. “Right, Dick?”

“Yeah,” Dick nodded, feeling his throat getting a little sore because of the ciling atmosphere, so he didn’t say anything else. Of course he was actually thankful too, even when his pride was still there, poking him.

The woman, though, made a gesture, shaking her hand so Nix would stop apologizing:

“You showed me your identity and credentials from the police station. As long as you pay later it’s all good for me.”

Nix glanced back at Dick who just shrugged; it was the best option if they could choose - they knew it. Dick didn’t feel right asking for this kind of stuff, especially because he had no money with him and the car was behind of the blocked road, so they couldn’t go there to take extra money and identification. But if they would be there, they could at least not drip water all over the place or stay naked for the day long, right?

Taking a couple of clothes and underwears, Nix and Dick changed his clothes in a bathroom close to the reception. They put some clothes between formal and not so formal ones and went directly to their rooms.


	8. Drowning in Safe Waters

 

A silence was imposed over them as they walked up the stairs. Dick was still uncomfortable, so it wasn’t a surprise Nix noticed something was wrong:

“What?”

“You didn’t need to…”

“To lie?” 

“You know why I did that.”

Dick knew why. He could act as if he didn’t, but he knew why. He had hadn’t been through anything like this before though, so he still felt inclined to feel himself wrong and quite different, strange to himself. When he was a boy, it was kid stuff. He had liked a boy but it was summertime. Everything went back to how things were in the next school semester and then he would never see the boy again. But Nix and him, their relationship was a lot more complicated; love and passion were not -just- big words, they were actually feelings they felt for each other. This love was mature and full of desire, full of intentions and expectations.

Dick nodded at last, quietly, knowing Nix wasn’t wrong for asking for more time for them to be together and by themselves. Actually, that was all he wanted for that night - and for all the other nights, but then it was thinking too much in the future and they, more than anybody else - could understand how is it to live in burrowed time. If they were going to stay there, on the other side of the bridge, by themselves, why couldn’t they enjoy each other’s company? Why couldn’t they be together?

Nix stopped and arched an eyebrow to that reaction, though:

“What’s that? Are you regretting what…” Nix looked terrible unsure and scared as he frowned, his thick eyebrows coming together in almost grimace of pain.

Dick could see that Nix would keep eating himself alive if he continued to seem regretful and Dick couldn’t let him do it, not again, not now when he could stop Nix from doing so just with a few completely honest words.

“No!” Dick had an immense urge to make it sure as soon as possible, because he couldn’t bear live like this, the way they were doing before. The doubt he could weigh on Nix’s heart, as well as knowing how it felt, was too much; he had done it to him before, just a couple of days back. That was not fair to do it again. “I don’t.” He rushed to Nix, his hands just inches away from Nix’s cheeks as he felt the urge to reach Lew, the urged stirring in his belly ever so hot but restraining himself as in an instinctive reaction of protection. He licked his lips and sighed, Dick leaned slowly onto Lew, pressing their foreheads together before Dick couldn’t help  grasping and pulling Nix’s jacket to himself. “I wish…”

“Uh-huh…” Nix knew what he was thinking of, he knew how Dick was feeling - the fears and the cool excitement running through his as blood. They were on the same page after all. 

Dick looked up to Nix’s eyes and as if receiving a nod from those dark chocolate eyes, Dick’s eyes drifted to Nix’s lips and they kissed again, hard as if trying to impress too big words and meanings into that simple and harsh, sloppy action. It had been days of angst. They didn’t need that anymore. Dick’s hands wrapped tightly around the jacket’s sides, pulling and loosening the clothing while sucked and then pulled away to kiss again. Nix moaned quietly under his breath at each specially hard sucking, while he had his arms around Dick’s waist keeping his lover impossible closer.

“I am sorry…” Dick whispered, exhaling by the mouth, pulling a little away as they kept their foreheads together. Dick’s closed eyes directed to the floor, as he still kept his hands tight on each side of the jacket, his knuckles barely going white while the cold from the storm winds was felt by his nerves, while his fair skin seemed just being like this naturally. His breath, the only thing he could hear besides Nix’s one.

Nix shook his head though, a little annoyed. Dick had nothing to apologize for. If there was someone that needed to apologize it was all the people and the things that kept them apart, made them feel bad for loving each other in all the ways they could think of. He had already felt that he was bad or sinful for being like how he was - and it had taken a great time to accept it. But Dick, the best person he had ever met, was like him. Was Dick supposed to be a sinner or morally wrong in any way? Of course not. He was sure Dick wasn’t, and neither could his love be something bad.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Nix said drily, because it even hurt him to know that Dick had ever felt bad for such a thing as love.

Holding Dick’s chin, Nix raised his own so he could meet the redhead’s lips with his again. Wet and slow kisses proceeded, the soft noise of their lips closing and sucking the sweet skin of each other’s lips; those affectionate sounds were the only ones they could acknowledge, besides their rushed breathes, in that quiet room so far away from the city, from any of those crowded places and people they knew. He took Dick to the bed not long after, as if he had already known the path for doing it other one hundred times. Nix pushed the other man gently onto the mattress and crawled over his legs, coming to bed too.

It felt like a long time had passed since they had last done it, while they had never done anything like it, that is, like queer sex – it was not sex, yet, but it could be very soon. Then Dick slid Nix’s jacket off from his lover’s arms and so he tried to take a look at those arms,  running them up with his hands, acknowledging the other man’s muscles shyly, the male body hair so present, especially as it was lay down on the skin, looking like thin and curious brown lines . It was so new and still it felt like coming back home, to a place he had never wanted to go away from in the first place. 

He had never had the courage to really stare at Lew’s body but now, now he supposedly could do it all and he couldn’t help staring as his thumbs rubbed the inner side of the arms with reverence and affection. His teeth always sinking onto the lower lip, repeatedly.

“If you…”

Dick shushed Nix by placing his index next to Lew’s lips and pulling the other man by the collar of the white shirt left behind to pin him against the mattress while Dick turned around himself as he hook a leg under Nix’s, as if it were just another wrestling matching that always kept happening between them. Nix’s back hit the mattress softly as he chuckled in surprise, making Dick shiver and smile, looking in wonder at his lover; because that could look a little like wrestling but it wasn’t wrestling at all and he was all sure of that in all the ways possible, in a pretty physical way even, down his trucks to be more specific.

“No more retreats,” Dick whispered, feeling like desire and love were flooding from his pores as his body was so hot he felt like steaming from them too, Nix’s eyes pinned him with intensity and desire. His eyes stared at each one of Nix’s for some time as he tried to read and absorb Nix’s feelings from the dark wide pupils to his ever-changing - between green and blue - eyes. Nix always looked intense, no matter what and it made him crazy.

“No more retreats, Dick,” Nix agreed, keep his glance onto Dick’s eyes until these eyes shifted and Nix’s shifted with them, slowly they went to the pinkish lips of his best friend as Dick’s went to his. 

Dick kissed him again, slower than he had ever done but more heated and sensual than never what seemed to create an itch into Lew, who squirmed under him, pressing his palms against Dick’s shoulder blades hard, as if there was nothing else he could do, at the same time that he was boiling in feelings and sensations.

As Dick pulled away to breath, Nix slowly started moving and then he shifted his mouth to his lover’s neck, nibbling the salty skin softly, trying his ways on his eternal major’s body. Everything tasted salty, especially because of all they had been through, into the seawater, under the sun and over each other’s body, producing and mixing sweats while their bodies frictioned, still it didn’t matter a thing and they barely acknowledged it enough to go for a bath before they could do anything, could touch each other in the ways they had always dreamed of - the whole trip to the bathroom seemed too much.

Slowly then, Nix pulled away so he could have a better access to Dick’s body, to appreciate Dick’s skin. He pushed Dick slowly with his mouth and palms, while his left leg wrapped one of the other man’s leg from behind, shifting the weight and bringing Dick’s back down to the mattress again - if there was something that was certain about Nix, was how much expression, how much need Nix print on his moves and the way he felt the need to express and to act, always trying to be in the position to give and give and give than to receive, at least when he had already took everything he wanted at the moment, giving and then taking as he saw the two things in a similar light while he was in bed, with someone that he loved.

Dick hummed, pleased, but he was soon prompted to moan as he felt Nix wandering his lips down Dick’s almost untouched body. He had never had this kind of passion, felt this necessity while having sex. He actually had had sex before, just a couple of times. He didn’t quite remember why he had done it those times; because none of the former lovers made him feel like the way Nix made him feel. And now he was absolutely sure none of those times made him wish someone’s touch that much. And still, he had done that. Maybe those times had happened in the heat of the moment. He could barely recall the sensations that were not even half of what he felt now.

As Dick had imagined during sleepless nights when he could just think about Nix to eas e himself to sleep, Nix liked to talk during those moments of intimacy and he couldn’t lie to himself and say that he didn’t appreciate that. Nix’s words had such strong tones, passionate ones; Dick could feel it by the husky of Nix’s voice and the groan that escaped by from his throat as Nix spoke his name - not that the pressure of his digits and the pressure of his wet swollen full lips against his skin wasn’t also a heated sign of that.

“I love you so much, Dick…” Nix whispered against the sea water tasting skin of Dick’s shoulder, marked by  dark freckles that were probably darkened by the earlier sunbath. 

Dick hummed and sighed:

“Me too…” in a low, strained tone as his embrace got tighter around Nix’s smooth and broad back. He could barely form any other words; it didn’t seem good enough, just saying those two words but he knew Nix knew he meant it, that nothing Dick said or did was for a laugh or meant half of what he had said. Now they knew that their feelings were mutual and there was no space for doubt or shame.

Almost like he was trying to not make Dick shy, Nix slid his palm over Dick’s abdomen slowly while he watched his hand slid across that mature  body, the one he had always desired, by the corner of his eye. He could give everything of his for this dream to never stop happening, that Dick kept moaning and caressing his head and nape as Nix explored the cavities and curves of this freckled body of his best friend and now lover with his lips, his hands, his fingertips, in any way he could.

“No, Lew, I want you to look,” Dick whispered, lifting Nix’s eyes to him as he raised the other man’s chin, bringing him closer while caressed the skin with his thumb. He sighed, “That’s all what I want.” He then went quiet and Nix proceeded to kiss him, suddenly a lot fiercer than he had ever done, a lot more lost in the sensation of it, as he was kissing the man he most loved in the world and loved him back just as much.

His body collided with Dick’s and the redhead couldn’t stop a surprised groan from escaping his throat, their bodies entangling in a way it was hard to understand where one started and where one ended, the same going to the other person.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, the way Nix made it, that is: love, had sex, or even fucked – and Dick couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud but he could imagine it was one of the words they could use to describe it. It was in that completely fully present way that Nix - the way Dick had always known him, his truly self - had always been for years, ever since they had first met. If Nix proposed himself to do something, he would do it completely willingly and thoroughly. There was no overthinking that could stop him, there was no space for fear to take him over.

Dick watched as Nix finally let his eyes wander down the other man’s abdomen. His eyes slowly made their way down as his palms continued to slide across the flat of Dick’s body, composed of some shallow and subtle cavities, besides the edge of some sharp bones, like his hipbones peaks at his sides. His digits impressed a subtle pressure here and there, especially when Dick winced or shivered, because he knew he was doing something right and he needed to know how it was the right way to do it with Dick. Not the righteousness as in morals, but the righteousness as in the giving his lover the pleasure he deserved. 

“I just…I just wanted you to be mine…” Nix admitted suddenly, curving his index finger around Dick’s belly button, in the second curve pushing a little his finger inside the shallow hole. He looked back at Dick, his eyelashes fluttering slowly into the dim light. “Mine and nobody else’s.” 

Was he being too selfish? Well, hadn’t he been selfish since he had called Dick to leave his parents for him? Not to come back to his house, but to keep being Nix’s company, making him a home? He had always been selfish, but not as much as he would expect, not with Dick Winters. That was sure. For Dick he could be incredibly selfless, even for himself.

There was a time, though – and Nix imagined that, deep inside he knew – that Dick almost left him. Days in which Nix had acted just like the stupid drunk his dad was, just exactly like him. Nix hated to think he could be like him, but he had taken the habit of the drinking, the habit of being easily annoyed, the habit to fight, at least with words, with whoever he wanted, and it had always been hard to just let all the habits go. A distant husband, a bad example for his children, even a bother to his friends. He was getting there, just like his father he was going to be. After he passed through the entire western front of the war, Nix was coming back home, coming back to the habits and the quirks he used to be disgusted by - he feared to emulate them so much to the point to imagine himself acting like his old man.

He could see how Dick hated that. When he got home drunk as a skunk every damn night after work, that is, after passing by his dad’s office for the whole evening and night off. He would stumble, groping his way to bed while making all the noise he thought he could because after all, that was his house, Dick had never paid for that. Actually, he had stubbornly asked to pay at least for half of it, but Nix had never let him and then, he was shaming the good man, because Nix couldn’t do anything to get the good man imagery out of his head, specially because he loved that man more than anything and still Nix was becoming the kind of person he hated the most.

Dick breathed deeply and looking at Nix for a couple of seconds, he had recalled all of these things that had happened to them. All of those things that made him cry during the afternoons he would find himself alone at home while Nix destroyed himself and brought Dick down with him. Those times seemed so distant. It was wrong to feel relief for the old man’s death but he did. He hoped it would at some point go away but he sure as hell knew he had his reasons to feel like that. Soon he was bringing his best friend back to him, connecting their wet and swollen lips, the whole length of their bodies from head to toes. They were finally getting together (again), being friends and also lovers, intimate again.

“I wanted you to be mine too, Lew,” Dick replied, his face covered with heat as he felt his cheeks burning hot, spreading heat to all of his face like syrup under a thick surface, like his skin and flesh. His face, his chest, his body were all unbearable hot; Lewis also felt really hot against his abdomen, but in the end it felt bearable enough since none of these things seemed to make his mind, to stop the actions. Dick had one of his hands behind Nix’s nape as they were still connected by the forehead. The only sounds, their rhythmic breath and the moist wind against the wooden windows bringing the sea scent to their nostrils. Suddenly the room was more chilling and Dick’s body shivered, although his body was burning hot not long ago; it was even cold at the edges of their limbs and they smiled.

Dick wanted him - Nix had a hard time to internalize it, but Dick really wanted him - and he had always wanted Dick for him, too. They knew. Finally they knew and wouldn’t stop to run away from each other, as if there were anything in between their bodies. Nix showed his characteristic rabbit teeth smile as he tried to hold back a wider grin and Dick showed his own top teeth too. How in hell would they imagine that? Happening in far downtown Florida, inside a type of hotel beyond a couple of districts and almost away from the continent as a whole. Barely a thing or two reminded them of the living world outside.

Nix pressed his face into Dick’s neck, kissing the warm skin tenderly. He loved Dick so damn much. Everytime he looked at him, touched that skin with his lips or his fingertips, rubbed against Dick in any way, he felt a strange and huge explosion of affection for the man, affection which turned into passion and desire as they got closer and closer, and their bodies were just the only things between their matched souls.

Dick held Nix by the back with his hands, palming Lew’s shoulder blades. He looked up, his eyelids fluttering slowly up. His hands going up to Lew’s nape again as his legs raised from the bed and his knees flexed, his feet rooting, as well as his butt over the mattress. Dick then went for something more wild as he tentatively arched his hips and thrusted them slowly against Nix’s, which took from both of their mouths a gasp of surprise and pleasure. Dick arched his head, his eyes were already closed, his hips rising against Nix’s again, looking for the same sensation, the friction of before. He was finally giving in and it felt amazing.

Meanwhile, Nix gasped again, out loud. His hands creasing the white sheets around Dick’s sides. He looked at Dick, completely lost in the sensation and in the strength that the action required, while his stomach was totally contracted, showing each and every square of Dick’s amazing (and worked up) abdomen. His mouth was wide open as he watched Dick’s little lines of grimace, of all natures, all of them but pain. Nix licked his lips, his cock was rigid against his briefs. He was desperate but he barely could move or do anything different from what seemed a natural, instinctive move, bucking his hips against Dick’s. 

Slowly they were moving in the same rhythm. Dick thrusted against Lew who thrusted back. It could be just the start or the only way people like them made love between themselves, but he didn’t mind to just have it and nothing else. Actually, drying hump with Dick seemed the only thing he would ever want for his life from there on; if it would all he would have with Dick, he would take it with a smile. He didn’t need much more when this seemed the best thing he had ever had in his whole life.

When Nix saw though, he had his mouth closed around one of Dick’s soft light brown nipples while his hips thrusted against Dick’s, his hands taking his lover’s pants off from behind, or at least trying. His eyes closed didn’t allow him to verify and he didn’t mind it, as much as the clothing went out before they came, it would be a win-win situation. Dick, for another side, was bucking his hips against Lew’s while his hand held Nix to his chest as he sucked Dick’s nipple. Oh, it was a lot better to be touched there by someone else, someone that knew to weight the way of his touch. Dick moaned under his breath as Lew gasped, out of breath onto Dick’s ear.

As things seemed to never stop surprising him, Dick’s eyes went wide as he gasped when Nix kissed his pelvis just on the line of his pube. The sense of eyes on him, made him cast his eyes down at Nix who licked his lips in a serious and concentrated expression, staring at Dicks face back. Dick blinked as he pursed his lips and then he nodded

“Please, Lew,” he plead, out of a sudden. It wasn’t characteristic of him to do so but he did anyway. His saliva seemed to thicken in his throat and his hands went cold as he grasped the sheets into his fists. His tongue ran the length of his lower lip and then made the way back across the top one. “Please.”

And so Nix obliged, looking down and then he slid the rest of the pants with the briefs down. Dick didn’t know what to wait or to expect. He wasn’t a virgin but he wasn’t exactly the opposite of it, his experience with sex and dating was short and superficial. He was practically a virgin in explore his sexuality like this.

The few times he went to bed with a couple of girls, it went as hormones and juvenile excitement would. Now here, they had the whole night for each other and so there was no real hurry to start and finish making love and go on about their lives. Either way, the time wasn’t as a great factor as the urge they felt to consume their passion for each other. There was a desire of living this dream for more than he could think of.

When Nix kissed his cock, Dick shut his eyes and his fists closed around the tissue of sheets. His teeth sank into his bottom lip and he felt his whole body shuddering as he still felt under the effect of that touch, even when it had already been over - it was basically a soft pressing of lips, a first tentative. Excitement was just start to consume his body there, though, fully present as a tic bomb, like how his hardness throbbed.

When he opened his eyes again he found Nix looking back at him, expectantly. Dick gave a shook breath and nodded again, but this time he felt a little more able to be vocal about what he had felt and what he wanted, besides what Nix meant to him, all of those caresses that Nix did to him.

“I am not… a virgin.” He swallowed thickly, “but this…”

“It’s a completely new thing,” Nix replied, almost  immediately. “Right?” There was something of insecure in Lew’s voice, but it was as small as their former problem seemed to be to them right now. 

Nix felt this, too. It felt like this for him, too. Dick smiled weakly. It probably was stupid of him to be surprised at their mutuality.

“I want,”  he nibbled his lips, staring down at Nix as if they could talk through their eyes, “More of it.” It all and you, too, he thought but didn't say it, he flushed instead at the thought of his eternal longing.

Something in his voice may have done something to Nix because in the next few seconds, they were making out again while Nix had his hand wrapped around Dick’s erection. As they kissed, Nix’s hand worked down Dick’s swollen length. His hand stroked the strained flesh smoothly, taking gasps and groans from Dick’s throat, muffled against Nixs demanding mouth. The fingertips seemed to be acknowledging the flesh as they pressed here and there over the veins and curves of the cock. These same fingertips seemed to be the death of Dick as they touched all the sensible spots with special attention.

“That’s…” Dick sighed heavily, his chest falling quickly as he tried to breath. “Oh, that’s…” He hummed, his breath getting louder. It felt so damn good and intense, enough to make Dick’s mind almost go blank from thoughts and worries, and even let out some words from his lips. “So good.”

Then Dick’s own hand went for Lew, too. His palm slid across the other man’s abdomen and sneaked its way into within Lew’s shorts. Gropping the hot and smooth flesh, Dick wrapped his own hand around his lover’s hardness. The thick and swollen flesh throbbed between his fingers as he stroked the stiffened cock from down the shaft to the wet tip with pre cum dripping. He would never imagine how much it would give him pleasure, touching someone else like this, so intimately.

“I had never thought it was possible,” Nix rambled, all of a sudden. “Feeling all that much...All because I am with you and my hand is between...Oh-.” Nix’s eyes went wide as Dick tentatively squeezed Nix’s erection tip, making him leak.

Watching Nix’s reaction made Dick have an idea and an almost uncotrabbly impulse. He licked his lips quickly and took the window to just move and go for what he had in mind.

“Mhm, Lew, let me…” Dick pulled away, gently as he leaned into Lew’s down parts. He took a quick look at the tented black shorts and then he grasped the erection shape, showing the strained flesh underneath through the thin silky trucks. He groped at the swollen shape as he stared, curiously sensing the cock through more than one sense and so after all, he pulled down the clothing with the underwear.

Dick glanced up to Nix just so he knew he was allowed to touch more intimately, on the hot member and as Nix nodded with a surprised expression on his features, Dick leaned into the bulge, bending all his back as he did. He leaned into the pelvis and savored the scent of sex from the pube hair and the slight sweat crotches. His cock twitched at realizing with all his senses the realness of this intercourse

He grasped the erection again then, tentatively, and mouthed a small part of the tender skin, a small spot from the flushed cock’s side. It was salty and it was probably even more salty because of the sea baths they had had earlier. Nix’s eyes over him, his back against some pillows as he was somehow sat, seemed speechless for a moment as he felt Dick touching him like that. He probably didn’t ever imagine Dick in that positon.

Then Nix yelped and arched his hips, curling his toes when Dick finally closed his lips relately tight around the cock’s tip. Dick gasped in surprise just to chuckle in following, glimping up to a very amazed Nix. Nix looked like a virgin, acting like that, as if he had never done anything alike; at the same time, they were kind of virgins when it came to them, involved in that way, with each other, sexually with the man over him, or under him - the man they loved.

“You-you laugh because I ain’t the one with a mouth onto…you. Gosh.”

It sure was bizarre for Nix to be that sensible, since he hasn’t been a virgin for a long time now. At the same time, he wasn’t feeling a simple physical touch from someone he probably wouldn’t remember the name and their face features on the next day. It was Dick, the man he had deeply desired and loved for God knows how much long now. And then it was happening, they were happening, it was suddenly real; they were finally together in bed, pleasing each other. It sure looked like a too good dream to be true.

As he overthought about all those times that they had never been physically, Dick took the man into his lips and then he slid his lips across the length, his right hand holding the shaft as his left slid across Nix’s soft abdomen up.

Nix swallowed thickly as all of his fingers curled and his eyes closed, while his head arched back. He wasn’t ready to come undone under that mouth. He had thought he was ready for everything, that he knew how it all would feel like, that it all would be nevertheless amazing but he thought he would know all that what would happen. He was so wrong. It was a lot more than he had ever expected. 

Oh, dear Lord.

Thank God he could keep his mouth shut for awhile as he was firstly receiving a blowjob because he was feeling too many things to think before speaking and he bet he would say a lot of things that could turn off the moment.

Dick was no expert on the job but surely he had the eagerness necessary to make a man feel loved and thus happy, besides as it could be imagined, Dick had all the instincts to learn things quite quick and make it right in no time.

Nix hummed.

“Oh my!”

His hands looked and found the ginger hair as he could barely swallow down normally without losing it all. He pulled the hair ever so often, while he panted between some pauses.

“Oh, Dick.” He nibbled his lips, groaning a little under his breathe as he glanced down at his partner, the bright copper red hair getting messy as it started drying; the pinkish lips getting red cherry and swollen, shining with saliva. The most beautiful and unique sight. “Oh, that’s good, really…Oh, shit!”

He was getting over the edge, just some more moves and he was going to lose it all and he wasn’t sure of how conscious he would be of warning Dick about his cum.

He hummed, he needed to talk dirty to make it last more (or it was what he tried to convince himself).

“Fuck, Dick, I want it all for the rest…” he groaned, closing his hands into fists around some locks; he just could hope that he wasn’t hurting him so much. “For the rest of my life. You into me, me into you. All my goddamn life!”

He looked down and saw Dick rubbing a little against on the mattress and smirked. Oh, that was it; Dick could feel it as much as him. He so wanted to touch him, the love of his life the way he made him feel. Stroking him until he started whining so nicely. Imagine it was enough to take him over the edge.

“Oh, fuck!” He was about pulling Dick away, when the other man just leaned on him even closer and took him deeper. Nix gasped out loud, his eyes went wide just before closing his eyes tightly again and then he came immediately. “Aw, Dick,” he sighed with affection. Oh, that was the best and so damn sweet.

His body and limbs went lax in no time as the aftershocks still made him squirm and thrust shallowly against the moist side of Dick’s mouth. His breath so damn fast and loud as his chest moved like crazy, up and down as he inhaled and exhaled quickly, looking for the air he couldn’t feel entering his lungs.

“Damn, Dick, you are the best.” He licked his lips and after staring at the ceiling for a great amount of time, he looked at Dick again, a small smile on his lips. “I just...I just love you so much.” His eyes were almost watering but then he realized Dick wasn’t done yet, so he moved quickly from his position.

“My turn, babe,” he announced, getting up and benting over Dick. 

“What are you gonna…? Oh.” Dick had Nix’s cupping his balls and going for a hard and passionate kiss.

“Gonna treat you too, of course!” Nix made his best british accent as he whispered against Dick’s lips. Oh, it felt good to feel Dick’s shiver.

Soon getting Dick out of breath, Nix went between Dick’s legs and started treating him by kissing the pale skin of his lover’s inner thighs. Dick was all cream, with the freckles and a bit of flushed skin to add to the charming of that sweet body of his. Slowly, Nix made his trail to his lover’s erection, kissing here and there softly, watching as the skin was filled by goosebumps and the body shudder and shiver with the touches.

“Lew…” Dick gasped over him, his fingernails just scraping superficially Nix’s shoulders.

Lew hummed and took the erection into his mouth, taking half of it inside with the help of his tongue. He sucked the tender flesh for a first time, feeling the it throbbing hard and vividly over his tongue. Dick was so hard and so swollen, he never thought he would get some much pleasure in a cock, feeling it inside his mouth. He tried another suck, another trip down and up the erection. It felt good…

He panted as he pulled away for a second, licking his lips while he stroked Dick.

He looked up at those blue eyes, which were closed to him. His owner lips were getting all bite, pinkish ones going white in no time.

“Dick…” he called and Dick opened his eyes.

“Lew…” he glanced down at Lew’s hand around him. “Please.”

Lew bit his lips again and then went down on his lover, harder and faster. His lips tightening around the erection, sucking and taking in the salty taste of that skin. He would have been unable to not have swallowed Dick’s cum when he did, because he was too into to have realized. Dick had tried to warn but he didn’t have mind and he wasn’t right now that white dripped from his lips.

“I feel...God, I feel complete.” Nix frowned a little but then he smiled. “I love you.” And then he crawled to Dick again, licking his lips and kissing his lover again. He kept whispering love promises while he showered Dick’s chest in sweet soft kisses until he had no more energy to do so and just kept lay down over his lover’s chest, kissing skin once in awhile, out of instinct.

  
  


 


	9. Small Talk

 

After sex, it seemed suddenly that the sleep could wait. Nix was rested against the backboard of the bed staring at the thin air in front of him, unseeing any and other thing that could pop in front of him, while his fingers ran down Dick’s soaked red locks, whose owner was lay down on his lover’s lap. If it would have been a normal day, Dick would have chosen to take a bath before the day started, sleep - if it were night or a Saturday morning post-exhausting Friday - or getting up to eat, after the bath. But now, here, it looked a lot more tempting to just let go of the responsibilities. Although Dick didn’t forget them for too long either:

“You think it’ll be the same?” Dick asked, suddenly, waking Nix up from his daydreaming. Dick couldn’t stop thinking and analyzing things even in his free time, he knew how he was.

Nix had to take a time to process it for a couple of minutes, to understand what Dick was talking about, since the sudden question: Just minutes before he was in a kind of lazy transe that his mind wasn’t processing any kind of thought.

“What?” he asked, still spacing out a little, “Oh, well, I don’t know why it would be different…” he answered, though, shrugging. For him, things were different but not to the point of making him think or act differently because of all the things that had happened between them that day - and they were a lot of things, none of them could ignore them but still, why would their friendship, their partnership change? 

The confessions were good anyway. Why would he be different towards Dick? Why would they be different towards each others?

“It’s different,” Dick replied in a low tone, although he turned his head so he could look up at Nix better, curving his neck in a little odd angle.

Nix curled his lips in a little bit of discomfort and answered with a grimace, coming back slowly to caressing Dick’s hair as he had his eyes lost, wondering how far Dick would go with that, because as much as Nix loved Dick for who he was, when Dick started overthinking, things  could go wrong, they had gone between them some days ago.

“Just…” he said, “Kind of.” 

He sighed, looking down at Dick who, at this point, was looking away again. 

“Come on, Dick, it’s not like we hadn’t mused about it for years.” Not as consciously as it could have been mused but he had always had felt something he couldn’t explain to Dick, something he knew was too strong to keep inside, but as strong to shock, too

As stubborn as Dick Winters was he repeated:

“Still, it’s different.” 

It was real, he thought. It looked like a dream, but it was real. Maybe was Dick worried about it?

Nix rolled his eyes. It wasn’t different for him. It would never be. Different seemed such a heavy word, he was afraid of it. When he came back from Europe everything was different and terrifying for that. He couldn’t have that again. Although here in Miami it was different from when they had been in Jersey. He had improved, he had started deserving Dick. 

“Just a little bit.”

“I would say a  _ lot  _ different.” Dick continued, affirming his opinion again.

This time, Nix just shook his head, resting his head back at the backboard, not willing to continue that argue. Especially because it felt like Dick would keep bringing worries about their new status and he was really not looking for it. He had been worrying for too long.

“Whatever you say, Dick,” Nix said at last, a little exhausted and rolling his eyes. “It still doesn’t change the fact that it just looks how I thought it should be.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dick asked, surprised. He turned his face around again, holding onto to Lewis’ thigh as he arranged himself so he could take a good look at his lover.

“Yeah,” Nix said, “you look the same, I look the same. It’s all the same. But better.”

“That’s…actually a good description of it.”

“Thank you.”

Dick was still thinking too much about it. So soon he was talking about it again:

“But about the others…”

“What about them?” Nix frowned. “They won’t know.”

“Yeah, but…”

“They probably saw it coming anyway,” Nix added.

“What do you m-?” Dick asked, suddenly shocked.

“Not that way,” Nix hurried to explain, with his eyes wide open and his hands resting against Dick’s scalp.

Dick chuckled, rolling his head on Lewis’ lap.

“You should be sleeping by now, shouldn’t you?”

“What? Are you gonna ground me? You?” Dick asked back, turning around to Lew, surprised.

“No, I just want my boyfriend back…”

“You want… what?” Dick asked, a smile flashing on his lips.

“I like you this way, b-…”

“Boyfriend?” Oh, Dick couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, well, the last time I checked, it was something like this.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t you like it?” Nix seemed a little insecure but Dick wouldn’t have it.

“Well, I think we could call each other’s husbands by now. We are old.” 

“Yeah, old.” Nix repeated thoughtfully “Gosh, I don’t feel like 40, I feel more like 60. I am so…old.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to have a 20 year old husband by now.”

“Funny.” Nix rolled his eyes, slightly shaking his head.

“You know I wouldn’t change you for anybody.”

“Tell me more about how I am the only one,” Nix teased, flashing a grin.

“Jackass.”

“Watch that mouth, Winters!” Nix laughed, surprised at the way Dick had called him.

Dick smiled his side smile of his and closed his eyes. He was so tired, Nix was probably as tired. He kept thinking about all that had happened. All the words he never thought he would ever hear. It had been a dream, hadn’t it? Hard to believe. Maybe he was still dreaming, because it felt peaceful there, laid down against Nix, the sound of the waves crashing over the rocks incredibly not so far. The thin and light rain against the closed windows. It was amazing. How a grey sky, a rain night could prone you to smile, relax and sleep. Not soon after he was sleeping and he didn’t know he was, because everything seemed to be mixed at that point.

 


	10. A day like any other day

 

“Such a luck, you guys,” Buck said, chuckling. He had a jacket over one of his arms and some keys in his other hand, the keys making a soft metalic sound as his grin seemed to make noise of its own. He had just brought them up to the station, just after they had passed on Dick’s (and Nix’s) places to take some exchanging clothes and toothbrushes. “A storm right when you guys took the day off.”

Dick entered with Nix, following Buck inside Dick’s office. They were all pretty familiar with his office, so everybody entered there without asking, at least when they were with him. Besides they all three worked together, so it was expected. Dick still looked a little uncomfortable around as he moved to his desk, his back a little arched to the front as if he were trying to hide something.

“Yeah.” Dick nodded, while blushing and so trying to avoid looking directly at Buck’s face, mainly his smart blue eyes. The idea of Lew and him together in a beach and then in a chalet room seemed too romantic to ignore, at least for them, for which had been indeed pretty romantic. “It wasn’t really planned, you know?” He entered his office, putting his things on the desk and walking to the reception for a gulp of water. He was feeling too hot that day.

Buck didn’t say anything in reply, but Dick could bet anything he had - if he was a man of bets - that Buck was grinning at them, like he used to while Dick leaned to the water machine, ignoring him completely, and Nix as well - but Nix seemed to be ignoring both of them. Either way, Dick didn’t like to depend on people and somehow he perceived that as being took care of, by Buck’s silence towards their awkwardness.

“Mm.” Buck clasped his hands together, strangely making almost no noise as he did, as if Buck was trying to not attract the attention to him and that was really suspicious. And then licking his lips and in a lower tone, he approached Dick and asked “Dick, did you see Taylor’s paper on me and Malarkey?”

Dick didn’t even look at Buck as he straightened his back and answered,

“I don’t think such a thing exists…” And there was he again, in another situation of rules breaking; but then again it was for a good reason, another possible situation of life and death, since be who Buck and Malarkey were - which he supposed to be like them - was a deal breaker in the world they lived in.

Buck nodded and Dick pursed his lips, nodding a little too.

“Alright,” he continued, still nodding, “I think that’s it, then. Ah, I’ll need the report for that assault.”

Dick hummed and nodded, glimpsing Buck’s, suddenly, anxious features as he turned around, nodding frantically with a cup of coffee in his great hand, just under his nose. He exchanged a glare with Nix and Nix shrugged, a serious expression on his features. That was, indeed, a complicated situation for every one of them, at least finding themselves in society - physically - sensing the glance from the other that was society and its stigma.

Dick exchanged a glance with Lew and as Lew shrugged, Dick turned around and went about his day.

The day went through the same way as the former day, although there was something very different happening between him and Lew.

Their exchange were pretty shy, during work hours but it didn’t stop them to give in to small gestures of affection, really small ones as a nod and a affectionate smile.

He could barely believe that it had happened and was still going. Having this kind of love and to be reciprocated as much was something unique and overwhelming. Besides, Nix was really attractive and charming, so he couldn’t help blushing to him as he showed his affection towards Dick.

In lunch time, Dick and Nix were passing across the corridor that went along the station pool. Nibbling his lips, Dick stared at the dark blue pool with new and great intensity. A simple sight of everyday, like this one, producing the dislock of unaccountable memories 

“Are you gonna look at that in the same way?” he asked, all of a sudden with a tiny smile on the curve of his lips.

Nix chuckled, turning his head slowly to Dick:

“Never.”

And Dick rubbed subtly his knuckles on Nix’s low back.

“Me neither.” Dick felt so damn happy and relaxed. He just couldn’t stop thinking about touching Lew, at least as in a form of saying that he was there for Nix, no matter what.

They stayed in comfortable silence for a time. Dick drowning in his strangely romantic thoughts when Nix spoke again:

“By the way, the Captain has plans for you,” Nix said, nonchalantly, walking with his hands into the pants pockets while he looked down.

“Yeah?” Dick allowed, looking down as well as if they had just being caught by his colleagues from school, kissing. 

“Yeah,” Nix replied, “He wants you to be a Sergeant.”

Dick’s glance shifted to Lew’s face and he blinked. He wasn’t expecting that here. The department wasn’t big and he was kind of a new guy. 

He licked his lips:

“And you know this because?”

Nix looked up at Dick and chuckled, surprised.

“You know me, I like to know things.”

Dick shook his head, rolling his eyes.

“How am I still here with you and I don’t know how you do this?”

Nix shrugged, teasing as they shared a smile back to the department.

-

“Buck, do you have a minute?” Nix asked, quietly, looking down as he scratched his lower lip subtly.

Buck nodded, not really understanding why Nix would need him or need to talk to him. They had never been friends.   
  
“Shoot” Buck replied, walking to Nix. If Nix wanted to say something to him - getting away from his way to talk to him, it may be important and something he would like to know.   
  
“I…” Nix started, still looking down. “I understand.” He then looked up, nodding profusely. “I mean, you and Malarkey. Me and Dick. It’s…Mhm, I think we might have something in common after all.” He was still not looking at Buck’s eyes.   
  
Buck nodded again, frowning, slowly realizing what was all that about. So Dick and Nix, huh? Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? They seemed glued together in times of war…and now, obviously.   
  
He nodded again:   
  
“Alright,” Buck said, offering his hand. Maybe now they could act like grownups for once.   
  
Nix looked at him, the hand hovering towards him. Nix was analyzing Buck. Buck could feel it and see by the way he pressed his lips in a peak. He was considering it.   
  
“Alright,” Nix said, finally shaking the other man’s hand. Buck snorted. The man would never apologize, would he?   
  
“Alright, I am going now,”   
  
“Ok, see ya.”

 


	11. D-day Plus One

_It had been summer break when it happened: their first and Dick’s most overwhelming kiss, one he firstly had received with shock - God knew he wasn’t really ready for that, God knew that the kiss could have been marvelous if Dick didn’t feel so conflicted and took out of surprise in so many ways._

_In the recess, as expected, kids and young adults alike were all over the place doing God knows what, all kinds of things they could come up with on their spare time._

_One day they received a call -denunce - about a Queer bar. Dick barely knew the existence of those places at the time. In his so shy and introverted ways, he had never imagined that so many people like him existed, being like him and even worse - from a survivance perspective - there were people that were solely attracted to a gender._

_Despite every one of the dangerous of being who they were, there were bars, there were places where people like him “could” meet and talk and dance with the people they most liked, people like them, that knew their struggles, the experiences they shared._

_The times were others after all, so he should have imagined that it would be as different as teenagers always made it to be. On the other hand, that was a lot different for him anyway. Maybe he was just getting older - and maybe, too closed mind? - but that was a possibility that never passed through his mind. He imagined it was something that had never been inside his folks’ head, either. It just made him think a lot._

_Either way, Dick felt all kinds of contradictory feelings towards it. He knew pretty well who he was and he had been acceptive of it for a time now - not that he didn’t feel watched all the time he got into a church. Sometimes he felt like a sinner anyway and it felt bad, but there was always a doubt of how much wrong something like love can be?_

_The midday sunlight burnt hot on their napes. The sunglasses gave Dick headaches, especially by the pressure onto his temples. There were just the two of them outside, in their police car and both of them seemed pretty not in the mood to do what they were ordered to do._

_“Can you believe that?” Nix asked, annoyed, and pulling his left arm out of the window. “We could be locking real criminal right now.”_

_Dick agreed. Why did they have to arrest those children? They were just children. Their partners didn’t matter, they were as adults. Why did they have to babysit society’s ideals? He though didn’t say anything, looking outside spacing out on the reflection of a sun ray onto a metal object, some water sliding down the surface of the material._

_“Can’t we just ignore it? Nix asked, looking at Dick through his aviators. Dick could feel the stare, although he couldn’t see Lew._

_Dick shook his head. He would have to hand in a report after their round. It was stupid and inhuman as far as he was concerned, but he needed to go - they needed to. He didn’t want to but he needed. He just hoped he could do it without letting the incident get worse. He truly didn’t want to arrest anybody._

_“Right,” Nix replied, turning his head back to the front window, starting the engineer. They didn’t have much choice but he imagined Dick would try to be as much as lined to his morals as he used to be. And that was a good thing. Sometimes he loved it on Dick as much as he liked the daily Dick. Maybe too much._

_They made their way to the bar in silence. None of them were in the mood to talk about that subject again, not until one of them came with a plan to make it more bearable possible - Nix felt as uncomfortable as Dick, although Dick wasn’t able to know that Nix also was affected._

_They had to talk about it, though, so when they were almost at the place, Dick asked Nix to stop a couple of blocks before the bar._

_Nix stopped not exactly sure of what Dick had in mind but obliging anyway._

_Dick started, talking firmly:_

_“We aren’t gonna do it.”_

_Dick looked serious as always, so Nix frowned and kept looking at him. Dick sure had something in mind about the problem but as anxious as he was, Nix was really looking forward to know how would they do it._

_“I mean, we’re going inside just so we know what kinds of thing we can excuse ourselves for and then we get out.” He breathed deeply and finished, “Reports will be just like the ones we did back at that river.”_

_Nix nodded, with a small - full of pride - smile on the corner of his lips. That was a better way to do it, at least they wouldn’t arrest anybody for their own personal business._

_They hopped out of the car quick and went to the bar, by walking. For their surprise, it was easier to get inside than they had expected; maybe it had something to do with them coming together to the place’s entrance, their hands almost touching as they walked close to each other._

_As expected, the place was full of young adults. Kids barely of age, some of the men were in drag and some of the women using full “male clothing”. They looked suspiciously to them. Dick and Nix definitely weren’t used to the environment or wore and stood like the others, nor was the kids used to older men like them._

_Dick also didn’t look much as if he had a more “open side”; meanwhile Nix looked kind of amazed by the whole atmosphere, curiously looking around as subtle as he could._

_They, indeed, hadn’t boosted the place. They had just came in and looked around, curious (and to pretend they were doing their job, what neither Dick or Nix agree it was this). If he were going to be honest with themselves, both of them were amazed at the things they had first seen there._

_Dick imagined that Nix could have seen something similar in Yale but anything he had seen there, it wasn’t this because Nix was as well as amazed as him. It was a first time for both of them, then and it was somehow a relief that it wasn’t like that just for Dick._

_When they got back, Taylor didn’t seem to pay the same attention to their records as he normally did. Everybody in the department seemed to be somehow uncomfortable and full of fear with the idea of being arrested by a colleague because of the Lavender Scare (byproduct of the Red Scare). As far as they were concerned, there was no way someone could be proved not guilty/queer and so they could be arrested and fired for any reason, at anything. If anybody from within the department decided so, denounced the person to a higher level, this person was literally “screwed”._

_The Lavender Scare was all about expelling the “queers” from the government. The queers that were supposedly in the same level of threatening than the russian communists and their allies (which was the main target of the Red Scare’s witch hunt). It didn’t make a lot of sense to Dick, but he imagined that if someone hated something, like who he was, these people would try to make their lives hell, especially when the government and people seemed afraid of what it would be of Russia versus USA, with all the consequences and byproducts of the wars, especially the weapon contests._

_He just hoped nobody would ever know about what they did or notify higher instances about them not following the producers properly and being themselves supposedly criminals._

_X_

_For the first time in years, Dick was slightly shaking as he hung up the phone. Why did Nix have to do these kind of things now? Everything was alright until then, all things seemed to get better. Nix hadn’t been drinking or smoked as much. They were living a quiet life, gaining their lives and then Nix got out of the tracks._

_Suddenly Nix decided to show up in a delicate situation, in a Queer bar nonetheless._

_Dick swallowed thickly as he looked for his car keys with his hands while his eyes watered, slightly veiling his vision. Since the Second Red Scare, people like him was being hunted down for subversiveness. And now, after Eisenhower, they were being hunt in their work places, in any capacity of the government. Nix wasn’t a fool to act like this, without knowing really well the consequences every second of his life with the political advertising on their backs as a starving wolf._

_He didn’t really know how he got to the bar. His eyes ached as he didn’t allow himself to cry, he would never do such a thing while he had other things to make they were going to be done. He walked in without much of an interrogation, although his body language probably wasn't the best of his attributes, as he had been both in the army and the police force now. He searched for Lew like a mad man - or mostly like a worried mom, his eyes almost bright red on the corners. He wanted to kick Lew’s ass so much._

_But then when he found him, he sighed heavily and relieved:_

_“You shouldn’t be here, Lew” Dick said, quickly, almost talking over himself; worried as he had never been that much in his whole life - and he had been in the Army a lot to be worried about any kind of thing, like the sound of a leaf breaking in Bastogne while there were no bombs - and looking over his shoulders. If they got caught there, if Nix was caught there...if any of them were caught there... He couldn’t bear the idea of Nix being punished for such a thing._

_“What? Are you gonna report me, Dick?” Lew chuckled, swallowing the remain alcohol from his short but thick glass and sliding off the stool, sauntering as he took his jacket, which was almost on the ground as it was strangely curved against the wooden counter of the bar, between his arms. “Come on, Dick, let’s go. It’s alright.”_

_Dick rolled his eyes slightly, exasperated but didn’t answer as they walked together out of the place. Lewis in front, all easy smiles and low and out of tune snickers while Dick watched the environment and him walking around swinging after drinking all that alcohol. Dick could just hope Lew was not getting drunker than normally, these days it wasn’t pretty much as before. He feared sometimes Nix could come back to old habits, though. It happened all the time. It had happened with his grandpa._

_Coming to his sense and to the present, Dick started talking again:_

_“And like, you-“ But he was interrupted by a couple passing through them, while Nix hit his back softly against Dick’s chest when retreating._

_“Gosh, you have been working out, huh?” Nix smirked, looking sideways. Oh, he could find all the excuses he wanted, even the ones which didn’t exist when he was drunk and wishful for something, or someone._

_“Yeah, as much as you’ve” Dick said,  non-challenging “Now, come on,” He said impatiently taking Nix’s by the arm as if Lew was a damn teenager out of the pub. As soon as they were out in the outside, Dick murmured angrily. “What was that, Lew? Are you trying to kill-?”_

_And Lewis’ lips hit Dick’s lips as two too solid physical bodies hit after took great speed, suddenly and unpredictable. Nix’s hands had slid to Dick’s waist and they soon wrapped it as their bodies flattened against each other. Dick’s lips were closed when attacked and now, his eyes wide, he could barely open them. He was overwhelmed. Lew seemed to have find his hot arms._

_“I bet you kiss better than that,” Lewis snickered on Dick’s lips and when Nix came again, but for a softer and more caring kiss, Dick kissed him back. Smoothly, their lips fit; an upper lip, with the help of a bottom, enveloping another as the other man’s bottom lip slid across the chin to join the hug, taking in his turn the other bottom and hiding it. Static they kept the lips, covering each other’s as if sealing a deal a long time made._

_Mouthing Dick’s lips was an old desire and now that Dick didn’t seem able to answer normally to his gesture, Lew took advantage of the position and kept their lips sealed together. Dick’s lips felt sweetly wet against his own, the inner part of his upper lip gave it away while Nix’s lips wet with moisture lips Dick’s lower one._

_It didn’t last much though, because as soon as Dick realized what was happening and where was it happening his eyes went wide and he gasped, moving away from the kiss._

_“What was that, Lew?!” Dick let out in an almost startled yell, pushing Nix away from him, abruptly._

_Nix smiled awkwardly, as if he were trying to laugh it off._

_Dick pursed his lips, licking his lips instinctively. He watched Lew trying to make it less than it was and then he turned his back to Lew, upset going back to the car in some kind of desperation. Quietly, Nix followed him next and they went back home with no words in between the time of the trip. If Lew knew what he had done, he would just be completely aware of it the next morning, because right now he didn’t seem to notice what that meant to Dick._


	12. Epilogue

 

When Nix started getting really better, Dick and Nix had a really long and important conversation. Dick wanted them to move on, especially because he wanted Nix to move on from the things that had kept him stuck in a quiet terrible mental state. The war had been enough to put some things in their heads that wouldn’t probably ever come out, or at least never stop being on the back of their heads; but the memories of Lew’s family were all there, printed on the luxury and physically actual oppulent heritage they had let to Nix. 

Dick just wanted to him to let go of the old demons and live a life of his own, separate and away from the influence of bad memories. Besides, Nix hadn’t been talking to his family in so long anyway and his dad, he had just died - a couple of years after divorcing Lewis’ mom. He didn’t have much to cherish or to get about in Jersey anymore. Blanche had never lived as much and Doris lived far away - and in the end, he was already a growup who needed to keep making his own journey. So sharing the decision with Dick, he decided to change, to move out to a new, completely different place.

From Dick’s side, he didn’t have the same contact with his family anymore, either – he’d talk to and see them on holidays, but it wasn’t like he was just a son, one of the children from the family branches anymore. It was more like he had to look for his own family now, to build a house and marry a cute housewife and bring up gap-toothed kids with freckles spread all over their bodies, specially the junction of the cheeks and the nose. It was delayed for too long, already. It was 1958, he was 40. He couldn’t wait his whole life to settle down and get his life together. That way he didn’t muse about going back home - home had gathered so many different meanings in those days, turned into rooms, memories and people - a lot longer before accepting the idea to go, just with Nix, to a new place, where he had never lived before

There was no reason to stay anymore.

So they decided to move on, to take a path of their own; which ended up translating to moving to Miami Beach, – just the other side of the east coast, from all the places they could have chosen. After all, they chose to cross the coast to try now a sunny place for a change, Miami then was the chosen option, and then they moved on as soon as they had arranged their business in their now old town.

Nix had seen his father’s ghost for a couple of months, the same months Irene had decided she had enough. It was hard to deal with so many losts when he was in a bad shape and Dick was just one person, still it ended up working. A lot of the work Nix put on getting better was directed to thank Dick for all he had done for him and seeing Dick proud of him once more, his lips widening in a full grin every day they got it right made Nix stronger.

They had come together closer than never after a couple of the months from Nixon Senior’s death. Nix was finally out of alcohol and drugs for entire hours and days and so they could talk and make plans for themselves, for their future. It was quite impossible for them to think they could do any other next step by themselves, without the other. Dick indeed had almost made a path of his own and left Nix with his problems behind, but it never really lasted when Dick found Nix that night after the old man’s funeral. Then he had finally realized that he needed to do -even a drastic- something if he wanted things to get better, Nix to get well again.

There were also a couple of times they almost kissed in Jersey, between their domestic exchanges, washing plates or Nix’s car together - arm against arm as they stayed side by side, teasing each other as Nix started teasing Dick. However, many things had stayed between them back then and Nix couldn’t do anything like that without the alcohol, because he knew if Dick reacted badly, he could very easily relapse again because Dick was all he had and all he wanted to and if he pushed him away, he didn’t know what he could do of himself and his life.

Then the idea of moving out and taking part in the police force happened. At first, the thought of being in some kind of combat made Dick falter and overthink about a silence promise he had done in Normandy. He had promised to himself and to God to live in peace the rest of his life after the war, but  there he was, thinking about trying to get a job in the Miami force.

What made a lot of difference was that the place was tranquil and the neighborhood minded their own businesses, besides being gentle and kind to the them. Everybody loved to call them by their Army ranks and as much as Dick didn’t like it very much, people couldn’t help it so he ended up letting them do in their way.

Nix had went out a couple of times, but not until later anymore in Miami. Just when they were supposed to boost a queer bar (but didn’t) Nix started to go out and attend the forbidden place. When he got there Nix kissed him and Dick had no idea what that meant and which would be the consequences of that, so he tried to keep the distance and pretend that had never happened but of course it didn't and he couldn’t pretend for long about it.

They meet an armistice, going to a trip together. As already had been said, they admitted their love and passed a night together in a hotel room.

The days passed and they built a routine around their forbidden love. It was hard sometimes to hope that they could last, that it was right and not wrong but they learnt with the kids from all those LGBT movements to see that they weren’t alone and there was actually something really wrong with the people that acted like they knew them, how they felt, what they did of their lives.

Buck and Malarkey came back sometimes, Nix and Buck even talked to each other cordially. Sometimes some things in life gather people around each other in order to survive and to fight back their struggles and problems.

Some years after they would meet the guys, most of them and by then, people already imagined something was going on but it didn’t matter much when they all fought with Nix and Dick and knew how valuable and important these men had been for their survival. They just knew them too much to not respect them, some may have even understood them. Either way, they always were received with love and grateful by the guys. There would never be a different treatment towards them, ever.

  
  



End file.
